What is a "Development Pattern"?
What is a development pattern?
The development pattern of a place, like a city, neighborhood, or block, refers to the way its buildings and human activities are arranged and organized on the landscape, as well as the underlying rules and practices that govern that arrangement.
It describes the placement and relationships of all the physical stuff that makes up a place: people's homes; workplaces; institutions like schools, libraries, places of worship; public spaces like parks, government buildings; and public infrastructure including streets, sidewalks, sewers, rail, and so forth.
You’ll find the term, or the equivalent "pattern of development,” in many Strong Towns articles—and in Strong Towns: the book—as well as used by others who write about cities and their form and evolution. We most often use it here in reference to the built-in advantages of the traditional development pattern, and/or troublesome aspects of the novel, historically unprecedented suburban development pattern which arose in North America in the mid-20th century.
Some clarification is useful here, because references to “development pattern” may inadvertently mislead some readers. For example, some objections or questions we commonly hear to our mission are:
“I live in a suburb, and Strong Towns seems really critical of suburbs. Not everyone lives in the city. How is anything you say relevant to my place?”
“You keep talking about traditional urbanism, but I live in a small town, not an urban area. How is anything you say relevant to my place?”
“I live in New York, and you keep talking about incremental and human-scale development, but we’re a city of tall buildings. How is anything you say relevant to my place?”
So here are two quick lists: first, 9 things a development pattern is. And second, 3 things it isn’t—that is, common misconceptions about what we mean when we talk about patterns or forms of development.
9 Things that Make Up a Place’s Development Pattern
1. How are the buildings spaced—how close to each other, and how close to the street or sidewalk?
Row houses produce a different pattern from detached houses with side yards. And front setbacks—how far the front of a building is from the private property line—have a huge effect on how a street looks and feels.
2. How do buildings relate to the public space adjoining them?
Are there frequent doors / entrances from the sidewalk? Are buildings fronted by quasi-public spaces for human use, like front porches or patios, by parking lots, gardens, lawns, or nothing at all? Are security walls or fences common or rare? Do most buildings have many windows that allow passersby to see in, or are there long stretches of blank wall? These are not just aesthetic choices: they affect the way a street functions, which is why they are part of its development pattern.
3. How big are the buildings?
You can think about this in three dimensions: width, depth, and height (as well as subtleties such as massing). The width matters more for how a building is experienced from close-up as a pedestrian, as well as how much street is required to serve it. Height affects issues such as light and shade.
4. How densely or intensely are buildings occupied?
A 10-story tower with a parking podium occupying four of the stories will function very differently from a 10-story tower divided into hundreds of studio or micro-apartments. A large mansion is very different from a subdivided building like a four- or sixplex. A big-box store is different from a strip mall.
5. How are different land uses arranged? Are they mostly separated or is there some or a lot of mixing?
What different activities are allowed and/or present within a neighborhood? Is it different on the interior streets versus the edges?
6. How are public places located or arranged within the city?
Are there are a lot of small neighborhood parks, or a couple "grand parks"? Are there prominent civic buildings, plazas, or promenades?
7. How are the streets laid out? In a grid? In a branching network? How big or small are the blocks, and what shape are they?
This affects how traffic flows and where congestion does or does not happen. It also may affect how much of your place’s land area is taken up by streets and pavement.
8. How wide are the streets? Are there strong distinctions between minor streets and major arterials or highways?
Suburban development patterns are often characterized by many residential streets which carry very little traffic, and major roads which carry the bulk of the traffic. On the contrary, urban grids often distribute traffic more evenly, and “busy” streets aren’t notably wider than "less busy” streets.
How easily can you identify the major thoroughfares in each of these aerial photos?
9. Who is street space reserved for? What rules govern the use of the streets?
These are photos of very wide streets, but the space on each is used in a very different way:
3 Things That a Development Pattern is Not (and Why That Matters)
1. It’s not the prevailing architectural style in a place.
The pattern of development has to do with how a city functions: how do people use it and how do they move around it? Form matters, but only because form affects function.
A traditional development pattern is not about a particular aesthetic or style of architecture. All of these photos represent a traditional, walkable development pattern that is alike in important ways when it comes to how people use the space:
2. It’s not a matter of how big the place is.
Even a tiny village can exhibit an "urban" development pattern. Here is Dingle, Ireland, population 2000:
And even a huge city can be functionally suburban. For example, San Jose, CA or Phoenix, AZ are cities (read: political entities with defined borders and their own government) of more than a million people, but both are overwhelmingly suburban, not urban, in their pattern of development. And critiques of the suburban pattern of development apply just as much to Phoenix as to its on-paper suburbs, like Tempe, Mesa, or Scottsdale.
A highway interchange just outside downtown San Jose, California.
3. It’s not about where a place is located.
Cambridge, Massachusetts is technically a suburb of Boston, because it is located outside the official borders of Boston. It is also more urban than the vast majority of places in the United States. Cambridge has narrow streets, a lot of pedestrians, high density, a walkable mix of uses, and 15 minute neighborhoods: it would be utterly incorrect to say that Cambridge has a suburban development pattern. It is a “suburb” only in a legal, literal sense.
Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA.
How would you characterize the development pattern of your neighborhood according to the questions laid out in this post? How about the downtown or center of the city you live in? How about the block you live on?
When we start characterizing places based on how they function, not where they are or what they call themselves, we can start to better understand and talk about the real ingredients of a financially strong and resilient community.