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Radburn, New Jersey
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Radburn is an unincorporated new town located within Fair Lawn, in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States.
Radburn was founded in 1929 as "a town for the motor age". Its planners, Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, and its landscape architect Marjorie Sewell Cautley aimed to incorporate modern planning principles, which were then being introduced into England's Garden Cities, following ideas advocated by urban planners Ebenezer Howard and Sir Patrick Geddes.
Radburn was explicitly designed to separate traffic by mode, with a pedestrian path system that does not cross any major roads at grade.
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Encyclopedia
Radburn is an unincorporated new town located within Fair Lawn, in Bergen County, New Jersey, United States.
Radburn was founded in 1929 as "a town for the motor age". Its planners, Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, and its landscape architect Marjorie Sewell Cautley aimed to incorporate modern planning principles, which were then being introduced into England's Garden Cities, following ideas advocated by urban planners Ebenezer Howard and Sir Patrick Geddes.
Radburn was explicitly designed to separate traffic by mode, with a pedestrian path system that does not cross any major roads at grade. Radburn introduced the largely residential "superblock" and is credited with incorporating some of the earliest cul-de-sacs in the United States.
Statistics
There are approximately 3,100 people in 670 families residing in Radburn. They live in 469 single family homes, 48 townhouses, 30 two-family houses and a 93-unit apartment complex.
Radburn's include of interior parks, four tennis courts, three hardball fields, two softball fields, two swimming pools and an archery plaza. Young children and their parents can make use of two toddler playgroup areas, two playgrounds and a toddler bathing pool.
There is also a community center which houses administrative offices, library, gymnasium, clubroom, pre-school and maintenance shops.
For census purposes, Radburn is mostly a subset of Census Tract 171 in Bergen County, New Jersey.
A community within a community
The Radburn Community enjoys much autonomy within the Borough of Fair Lawn. Pursuant to enabling laws passed in the 1920s and covenants included in the original deeds for the development, the Radburn Association is a private association which is empowered to administer Radburn's common properties and to collect from the owners of properties quarterly association fees to cover the Association's maintenance and operation of communal facilities. The Association is also empowered to restrict development and decoration of Radburn properties in order to maintain a consistent "look" to the community. Use of Radburn Association facilities is limited to residents (though the parks themselves are ungated and the walkways are public property of the Borough.)
Governance
Radburn residents vote for a board of trustees to govern the Association. Nominees to six of the nine board seats are chosen by current trustees. Two other seats are appointed by the sitting trustees and not subject to the residents' vote. The ninth seat is filled by the President of the Radburn Citizens' Association.
In November, 2006 a group of Radburn residents opposed to the current system of governance filed a lawsuit against the Radburn Association. The plaintiffs claim that Radburn's governance violates New Jersey state law and the New Jersey State Constitution. The small group of residents are represented by two public interest legal organizations: the and The Community Law Clinic of The Rutgers School of Law-Newark.
On April 1, 2008 the New Jersey Superior Court awarded summary judgements for both sides in the democracy lawsuit. Judge Contillo found that Radburn's governance was legal as well as its membership. The Court ordered the Association to comply with the law by providing full financial disclosure to residents and amending its bylaws to support open trustee meetings four times each year. Judge Contillo also ruled in the Radburn Association's favor regarding the procedure for nominating and electing Trustees.
Respected New Jersey Constitutional expert Frank Askin of the Rutgers University School of Law at Newark, and his Clinic on Constitutional Law, have now joined the plaintiffs' pro bono legal team for the appeals process, intending to affirm through the courts that the PREDFDA statute guarantees free elections in planned community government
Facilities
The Radburn School, an elementary school located on the edge of the "B" park, is operated by the Fair Lawn Public Schools. While many of its students are Radburn residents, it serves a larger district. The school, built in 1929, was designed by the architecture firm of Guilbert & Betelle. The building was expanded in 1955 and again in 2005.
Several prominent Fair Lawn businesses exist in Radburn's business district, which is at the intersection of Fair Lawn Avenue and Plaza Road, two important arteries in Fair Lawn. Many of these businesses are within the Radburn Plaza (clock tower) building, a signature landmark of Radburn and Fair Lawn itself. (The building suffered a severe fire several years ago and was recently restored in its prior image.) Nearby stands the Old Dutch House, a tavern built during the time of Dutch colonization of the Americas.
Facing the Plaza Building is the Radburn railroad station, built by the Radburn developers along the Erie Railroad line (later Conrail) and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Passenger service operates there today on the New Jersey Transit Bergen County Line.
Failures and disappointments
The original development plan was to have covered a far larger geographical area, with the platting running as far north as the border with Glen Rock and east to the border with Paramus. The Great Depression led to the economic failure of the original development company and the relatively limited actual development of the Radburn idea.
The emphasis on common areas and an extensive interior park system meant that the amount of land allocated to most homes was relatively limited, a choice made under the assumption that homeowners with such easy access to parks needed less private land. Small home plots, however, resulted in the construction of relatively small homes by 21st century U.S. standards, homes that couldn't be expanded. The typical closeness of the houses also resulted in neighborhoods with somewhat less privacy compared to other types of homes built during the same period.
The "town for the automobile age" did not take into account just how popular the automobile was going to be. Most of the Radburn homes are on small cul-de-sacs ending at a park; this design was intended to accommodate automobiles without requiring them. As latter 20th century economics and practice resulted in families with multiple cars, congestion arose on the cul-de-sacs where parking outside of one's own driveway was limited.
Most homes in the area were oriented so that their front doors were facing a park or a "walk street" leading to the park, with a secondary entrance on the street side of the home. This design is not suited to a lifestyle centered around the automobile.
Radburn as a model
The same design choices seen as impediments to a lifestyle centered around the automobile led to perceptions that Radburn can serve as precedent for the car-free movement.
The impact of Radburn's urban form on energy consumption for short local trips was considered in a 1970 study by John Lansing of the University of Michigan. The study found Radburn's design to have important implications for energy conservation, recording that 47% of its residents shopped for groceries on foot, while comparable figures were 23% for Reston, Virginia (another Radburn-type development, but more car oriented) and only 8% for a nearby unplanned community. Other findings, such as low figures for weekend trips and low average numbers of miles traveled by car per resident, bore out this claim. (See reference, below.)
The Radburn model was used in the planning of some Canberra, Australia suburbs developed in the 1960s, in particular Curtin and Garran. It was also used in the Melbourne suburb of Doncaster East in an area known as the Milgate Park Estate.
The developers of Varsity Village and Braeside, subdivisions in Calgary, Alberta used the Radburn model in the late 1960s. The Radburn concept was also used in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in the early 1950s in at least two communities: the Wildwood Park area of Fort Garry, consisting of 10 loop streets (bays); and the Norwood 'Flats' area of St. Boniface, consisting of 4 bays - both totalling several hundred single family houses, all facing sidewalks and green spaces and backing onto short loop streets. Today, they are considered to be two of the most desirable middle to upper-middle class neighbourhoods in which to reside in Winnipeg.
Grove Hill, one of the seven planned neighbourhoods in the Hertfordshire new town of Hemel Hempstead, was also partially designed using the Radburn model. A part of Yate in South Gloucestershire in England was developed using the Radburn model. Elsewhere in England the model was employed in an extension to Letchworth Garden City. In The Meadows, Nottingham the model has been less successful: Nottingham City Council has stated that "the problems associated with the layout of the New Meadows Radburn style layout... contribute to the anti-social behaviour and crime in the area."
The Radburn model also inspired the American Radburn design for public housing.
Trivia
The group behind Radburn's plan had earlier worked on Sunnyside Gardens in the Sunnyside neighborhood of the Borough of Queens in New York City.
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