To Build The Compact Green City

This section of the website is based on selections from Manfred’s book To Build the Compact Green City: Manifesto and Call to Re-think Architecture and City Planning, Published by St. Petersburg Press in 1993.

The book appears to be out of print and extremely difficult to find. I believe it can be an important resource for architects and city planners who are looking to house growing populations in cities. Manfred’s vision was for cities that can be both beautiful and comfortable to live in, and which allow for local food production and plenty of green space. In our era of rapid climate change we need to rethink many aspects of our lifestyles–I found Manfred’s design philosophy to be timely and valuable.

Common sense and necessity will cause us to make the best use of the little space (or spaces) we have to build in compact ways, to cultivate our gardens, to grow food in little spaces, and thereby our cities may green again, and become places of great beauty.

Design Philosophy:

Introduction
The rights of all people for safe, healthy, affordable and beautiful living and working accommodations and surroundings.

Why Live Together in Cities?
For better or worse, most people, by choice or necessity, live in cities, the places of great multitudes.

Philosophy of Approach:
Necessity, in planning and building, now and in the future, means compact living

Some Questions:
Common sense and necessity will cause us, to make the best use of the little space (or spaces) we have to build in compact ways, to cultivate our gardens, to grow food in little spaces, and thereby our cities may green again, and become places of great beauty.

Private Home Design:

Accommodating Many Functions in The Private Home:
By order, we conserve the space for the essential and leave thereby a little unused space, a breathing space, space to move around in, a little luxury.

The Personal or Family Private Area:
While scarcity of building space and scarcity of building funds calls for compact housing, a proper analysis of the functions and characteristics of space will enable the planner or architect to provide livable and even beautiful spaces.

The Garden
Man is not born to spend all his life in a cave or even within four walls. One of the differences between merely existing and living is the joy we get from seeing nature, living within nature, or watching the beauties of plants, the play of light and shadow on them, the change of the seasons, the change of colors and mood.

Rooftop Greenhouses
I believe the greenhouse on the roof, the glass or the fiberglass secondary roof over the earth covered primary roof, to be technically sound, economically affordable and quite logical in terms of ecology.

(more to come)

The Earth-Covered Roof

Household Garden Yield Planner

Small Animal Housing Planner

Sample Home Designs

City Planning

Density vs. Dispersal

Sprawl

Where To Locate Industry

How To Introduce Plants

Neighborhood Store Integration

Study of Portugal Street Designs

Transportation Models

Greening Roofs

Public Spaces

The Main Street Problem
Many smaller cities in North America are faced with a problem of deteriorating main shopping streets with older buildings usually two to three storeys high.

Facades, Enclosures, Terminal Points

Designing Public Spaces

Designing Plazas

Multi-Use School Designs

Walkways and Bicycle Paths