“The place is so extraordinary that those watching the movie don’t believe Seaside could really exist. In fact, everyone thinks the village was entirely built for the occasion, naturally in Hollywood,” says the film producer Edward S. Feldman.
We went to discover Seaside. On the northwestern coast of Florida, near the Alabama border, there is Pensacola, one of many American towns full of lights, megastores, aquasplash parks and seaside restaurants where you can eat lobsters for just a few dollars. An hour’s drive south is Seaside, a small pastel-colored village, quiet, warm, and welcoming. Designed and built to human scale.
We are very far from the crowded beach resorts of the peninsula. There is not much tourism here even though the warm Yucatán current pleasantly warms the sea, and the snow-white beaches guarantee a tan that anyone would envy. The sand of the sugar beaches has a high quartz content and is so white that it reflects heat and remains cool even during Florida’s hot summer sun. Walking barefoot on the cool beach and listening to that strange “squeaking” caused by tiny quartz grains rubbing together is relaxing in itself. Living in Seaside, in a seaside cottage, is the ultimate.
In Seaside there are many houses along the shore. However, they are all very close to the center; a center with a post office, supermarket, church, and school.
A cutting-edge urban planning solution
The town was built in 1980 without leaving anything to chance. Conceived by Robert Davis, Seaside was designed and realized by internationally renowned American architects including Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and Andres Duany of the Miami firm DPZ.
The slow and continuous abandonment of metropolises in search of more livable places yet still close to their work has proven over time to be a wrong choice. In recent decades, Americans, sometimes enticed by seemingly appealing housing solutions, other times pushed by silent economic powers, ended up emptying their big cities, which today are reduced to simple containers of service and commercial activities. They emptied them only to find themselves confined to anonymous areas of a distant suburb, tied inseparably to the car. After many years of this phenomenon, the most perceptive architects have noticed a timid reversal of trend. Among ordinary people, a strong need for humanity began to spread without however wanting to give up the acquired well-being.
It was thought to apply new urban planning criteria to those small centers very close to metropolises, which, as mentioned, have become huge bedroom communities, sometimes degraded and often dangerous.
The idea of revising the urban layout of the suburbs thus gained traction among professionals, and architects set about finding a quick solution to this new problem. Some thought of the systematic recovery and transformation of existing residential areas. Others opted for building new housing realities. Everyone, however, thinks of a “humanization” of suburban agglomerations, a resizing that is only possible by creating livable and healthy environments that especially foster human relationships.
The experiment began starting from areas close to small and medium-sized towns.
Pastel-colored houses and “living” materials for the human-scale town
Seaside is one of the best examples of this new American trend. To build the houses in the town, the romantic Victorian style was preferred and wood was used, a material many consider “alive,” with a soul; but above all because it is a local material. The houses were made even more welcoming by painting them in soft pastel colors. The street pavement was made of gray granite integrated with terracotta bricks; although initially the architects, perhaps carried away by excessive enthusiasm, had covered the streets with shell fragments to ideally connect the town to the sea, so close and so present in local life. But since it was too uncomfortable to walk on, the current solution, certainly more practical, was preferred.
All houses are two stories, with a large living room on the ground floor and bedrooms upstairs. Each has a bright and welcoming veranda where you can spend some of your free time in complete relaxation. Moreover, the designers believe that the veranda fosters good neighborly relations, bringing life back to a more human dimension. It is also easier to keep an eye on children playing outside.
Garages are at the rear of the houses and are accessed without cars passing in front of the houses: hence no smog, noise, dangers, or traffic. Everywhere there are bike lanes and the omnipresent megastore is replaced by a well-stocked family-run grocery store. Not far away are swimming pools, golf and tennis courts, and of course greenery everywhere.
The blue color of the sky and the sound of distant waves contribute to making life peaceful in this human-scale town where vacation reigns supreme over daily life.
