Recording of 1991 'San Antonio By Design' Seminar by Andres Duany

A YouTube video features a nine-part talk given by Andres Duany in 1991 in San Antonio, Texas, after visting downtown and RiverWalk.

2 minute read

November 28, 2006, 1:00 PM PST

By Chris Steins @planetizen


The YouTube video follows. For the full set of nine videos, select the source link, below.

Reader Mike L offers the following summary:

Andres Duany
Lecture: "San Antonio By Design" Seminar
1991, San Antonio, Texas

This 1991 slide show and lecture was given to attendees in San Antonio and is a variation of Andres Duany's very popular and well-received presentation that he gave to universities, architectural conventions, and urban planning groups.

The lecture runs 1 hr 25 minutes, and was originally taped to VHS as it played in loop fashion on local government access cable TV in 1994. It has been placed on Youtube.com for it's historical value and in the interest of furthering academic study and discourse.

The video has been subdivided into 9 10-minute segments in order to accommodate file size limitations for uploading to Youtube.com. The 9 segments, loosely described are as follows:

Part 1: Introduction; Background; Suburban sprawl patterns; the four major components; public realm/private realm

Part 2: Zoning/Codes; Single Use vs. Mixed Use Planning; Traffic and congestion issues; Quality of Life issues; Scale and relation to physical compatibility vs. functional compatibility

Part 3: The four major components of suburban sprawl cont'd; Business/retail component

Part 4: Residential component today, vs. the way we used to do it; Importance of mixed use, mixed range of income earners; Privacy/Community; towns vs. suburbs

Part 5: Residential, continued; Addressing affordable housing; The discipline of front/back; Intro, "sense of place"

Part 6: "Sense of Place", cont'd; Current residential development issues

Part 7: Residential development issues, cont'd; Roads: highways,avenues: It's all about the cars; Terminating vistas, then and now

Part 8: It's all about the cars, cont'd; Who suffers the most?

Part 9: Who suffers the most? cont'd; Gold-plated highways at the expense of our civic and public buildings; Vertical vs. horizontal infrastructure; Affordable housing, cont'd-"one car less"; In conclusion: "American Dream, or nightmare?"

Thanks to Mike L

Saturday, January 1, 2000 in You Tube

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I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

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