I question the assumption that the high-density so-called ‘sustainable’ cities that regularly feature in this column are innately superior to low-density settlements as models for living. Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy towns and cities which teem with life and pulse with the levels of activity and human interaction that only high densities can generate. But as a tourist, not as a resident. A week in Amsterdam? Great. A trip to London every month or so, to enjoy the theatres, museums and galleries which only a densely populated city can provide? Fine. But just over three hours away by train is my home town, Hexham, the place in which I enjoy living and which gives me a better quality of life.
From my self-build house in two-thirds of an acre I can enjoy views of woods and fields and of the abbey at the town centre, not a mile distant. Five minutes by bike or less by car and I can be at the arts centre, the cinema, the sports centre or either of the two golf courses that I have had a hand in redesigning. Big city facilities? Newcastle and the mighty Sage Gateshead are less than half an hour away. I could go on, but before my smugness becomes unbearable, I’ll move on to my real object of desire which lies some 6000 miles to the west.
Like many others, I have deep reservations about George W Bush’s America, and increasingly it takes an effort to remind myself that the land of the free still possesses many virtues, not least of which is an ability to create small towns that are models of sustainable living. I accept that SUVs, junk food and other similarly infantile self-indulgences are not the greatest advertisement for my thesis, but the nation that brought you Thoreau also developed the iconic American timber-frame suburban house and the genuinely democratic political structure and shared social ethos of the American small town, the pursuit of happiness made manifest.
I could choose from hundreds between the Atlantic and Pacific, but in terms of location, it’s a no-brainer. Just name me a more beautiful road than Pacific Coast Highway – California 1 – as it snakes north out of Santa Barbara, taking in William Randolph Hearst’s magnificent palace at San Simeon (much sunnier than Citizen Kane’s brooding Xanadu), and the giant redwoods and pounding surf of Big Sur (location of the only western set by the sea, Brando’s One Eyed Jacks), before reaching my particular object of desire: Carmel.
Although it is little more than an adjunct to Monterey today, Carmel City (population 3000) was founded in the eighteenth century by the famous Father Serra, who felt obliged to move his mission from Monterey to protect his Indian ‘neophytes’ from the attentions of the bawdy Spanish soldiers stationed in the then Californian capital.
In later years it was also a retreat for generations of writers from Jack London to Jack Kerouac, and is now perhaps best known for its most famous innkeeper and mayor, Clint Eastwood.
It’s not hard to see the attraction; pretty timber and stone houses and inns nestle among beautiful ancient and twisted sea pines. The grid-iron layout gives the town a disciplined core, but overall the consistent two- and three-storey vernacular architecture generates a casual and comfortable mood, reinforced by the ubiquitous roaring open fireplaces provided at the inns to counteract the chilly fogs that are prone to roll in off the ocean.
Ah, the ocean – Carmel’s USP. There’s no separating promenade to dull the impact of the juxtaposition. Like St Andrews, where the old stone town directly and dramatically abuts the historic links, Carmel at its western limits bleeds into the fabulous 17-mile Monterey beach and to the north is bounded by the cliffs of the Pebble Beach Golf Links, a relationship which underlines the single most salient fact about the Monterey Peninsula. While famed for its wildness and outstanding natural flora and fauna, it is in reality a 7000-acre housing estate incorporating four of the most scenic golf courses in the world. It says much for the genius of its developer, Samuel Morse, that he had the foresight to separate and protect the coastline from the frontline properties by designating a strip for public walks and ninety spectacular holes.
The idea of the golf course as the lung of an urban community has been strangely neglected in the UK, the home of the game. Viewed as a bio-diverse park with public walks, protected nature areas and peripheral housing which can achieve surprisingly high densities, its rarity is an indictment of the lack of vision of our planners and placemakers. When I see the sterility of the ‘visions’ provided by our leading trendy architects for the Thames Gateway, I can only wonder how they can get it so wrong when 100 years ago, Sam Morse got it so right.
George Oldham is an ARB board member, former Newcastle City Architect and now a designer of golf courses.

AT187/April 08 p88.