Officials Look to the Past for the Future of Urban Planning : Suburbs: A Miami architect tells Thousand Oaks and Oxnard leaders a return to neighborhoods is needed.

Thousand Oaks City Councilwoman Elois Zeanah on Wednesday took a look at the past and liked what she saw.

Zeanah said it is time to slow the spread of suburban sprawl so common in her city. She said city leaders need to rethink past planning practices that have emphasized wide boulevards and giant parking lots in the name of modern, high-speed travel.

Perhaps it’s time to return to a simpler day when pedestrian-friendly towns were anchored by downtown districts featuring houses and shops and parks, she said.

“I’m learning about what has gone wrong with the planning process,” said Zeanah, one of a 25-member city contingent who attended a daylong planning seminar in Oxnard. “I’m learning that we shouldn’t be looking so much at the new development practices but going back to the old way of doing things.”

Zeanah was one of more than 200 elected officials and city planners won over by the gospel according to Andres Duany.

The internationally renowned Miami architect, who travels the nation dispensing cures for the ills of urban America, has helped bring life back to more than 40 new towns and urban redevelopment areas.

He is a member of an architectural team recently hired by the Oxnard City Council to guide the revitalization of the city’s downtown district.

“We used to build wonderful places when we were a poor country, but the affluence over the years has allowed us to be stupid,” Duany told those who gathered at the Mandalay Beach Resort to tap into the secret of his success. “The first 40 or 50 years of the planning profession were spectacular successes. The problem is that they blew it so badly that they destroyed a lot of American cities.”

Duany said cities need to return to the way things used to be, a time when development and growth weren’t dirty words and always opposed.

Until the early 1900s, towns were designed neighborhood by neighborhood to be places where residents could work, shop and play. Streets were narrow and architectural design was basic and practical.

“The problem with suburbia isn’t that it is ugly, it’s that it doesn’t work well,” Duany said. “This isn’t that complicated, it isn’t rocket science.”

Officials in Thousand Oaks and Oxnard already are preparing to revitalize their urban cores.

Officials are now drafting a plan to revive Thousand Oaks Boulevard, a hodgepodge of mostly small shops that make up that city’s main business corridor. The city already has spent $10 million on improvements for the boulevard, and plans to spend another $8 million to $10 million in the next five years.

“This is something where we can control our own destiny, where we can return to things that used to work,” said county Supervisor Maria VanderKolk, who represents Thousand Oaks and who sponsored the Duany seminar. “All of those things we love today we have stopped doing.”

In Oxnard, the council has chosen the Ventura firm of Rasmussen and Associates, in association with Duany, to draft a master plan to guide revitalization of the city’s downtown.

The master plan includes building residential units atop stores and offices to provide affordable housing and to infuse the central business district with new customers.

“It’s a beautiful place that needs to be stabilized and made safe for investment,” said Duany of the withering area. “Right now it’s not safe.”