Radburn, New Jersey

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Radburn is an unincorporated new town located within Fair Lawn, in Bergen County, New Jersey.

Radburn was founded in 1929 as "a town for the motor age"^[1]. Its planners, Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, and its landscape architect Marjorie Sewell Cautley^[2] 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^[3].

Radburn was explicitly designed to separate traffic by mode^[3], 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.^[4]

Contents 1 Statistics 2 A community within a community 3 Governance 4 Facilities 5 Failures and disappointments 6 Radburn as a model 7 Trivia 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Statistics

There are approximately 3,100 people in 670 families residing in Radburn.^[3] They live in 469 single family homes, 48 townhouses, 30 two-family houses and a 93-unit apartment complex.^[3]

Radburn's 149 acres include 23 acres 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^[3].

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.^[5]

[edit] A community within a community

The Radburn Community enjoys much autonomy within the Borough of Fair Lawn. Pursuant to enabling laws passed in the 1920's 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 tax the owners of properties included within the development in order to support the Association's maintenance and operation of those properties. 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.)

[edit] Governance

Radburn residents vote for a board of trustees to govern the Association. Nominees to the nine-member board must be approved by current and former trustees, the only group of residents considered to be Members of the Radburn Association. Most residents are not considered Members and therefore cannot nominate trustees to run in board elections, attend board work sessions, or see Association financial records.

A group of Radburn residents opposed to the current system of government has filed a lawsuit against the Radburn Association in order to protect the legal rights and financial investments of all Radburn residents. The plaintiffs claim that Radburn's governance violates New Jersey state law and the New Jersey Constitution. The residents are represented by two public interest legal organizations: the New Jersey Appleseed Public Interest Law Center and The Community Law Clinic of The Rutgers School of Law-Newark.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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^[6]. 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.

[edit] 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.^[6]

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^[7]. 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official website of The Radburn Association
• Official website of the Radburn Citizens' Association
• Borough of Fair Lawn
• Radburn. National Historic Landmarks Program. Retrieved on June 18, 2006.

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