When a disaster destroys your home, there are basically two responses. You can choose to start afresh, and build an entirely new house. Or, you can rebuild the house you had before, brick by brick, because it was familiar and because you loved it. That was the dilemma facing Avila Beach, an unincorporated community San Luis Obispo County, which found itself with the rare opportunity of rebuilding after a near-total demolition. The community's decision says much about both planning and the human dimensions of urbanism. Avila Beach is a Steinbeck kind of place — at least, Steinbeck in the boozy, sentimental mode of Cannery Row or Tortilla Flats. Avila Beach is a funky, dusty beach town with a population of 350 residents at its height. No new buildings have gone up on the town's 50 acres during the past 23 years because of a water moratorium, and the existing buildings are not blue-ribbon examples of property management. There are a couple of small grocery stores, a diner, and several bars that can get loud late at night. That's the way Avila Beach has always been, and that's the way residents like it. Then came a shock: a local group, Communities for a Better Environment, won a $200 million lawsuit against Unocal Corporation in 1998. Unocal had leaked an estimated 400,000 gallons of crude oil into the sand and soil of this popular beachfront community. Unocal then decided that, in order to save the town, as we used to say, it was necessary to destroy it first. The oil company chose to clean up the mess by digging out all the contaminated soil and carting it away all 200,000 cubic yards of it. Unocal's plan was to excavate three enormous holes in the middle of town; the Associated Press likened the operation to a "dentist performing giant root canals." Unocal paid to evacuate local residents and compensated local businesses for lost earnings. Nearly 46 buildings — including nearly all of Front Street and an entire mobilehome park — were demolished. The demolition and reconstruction, which started in late 1998, is scheduled for completion in December. During the past year, county planners held public meetings with Avila Beach residents to build a consensus on the best way to reconstruct the beachfront settlement. For the most part, however, residents wanted the town rebuilt pretty much the way it was. The Avila Beach Specific Plan recommended preserving the character of the community, the use of traditional materials, bike paths and other alternative forms of transportation, and creation of a pedestrian zone between Front Street and the beach. Local residents were not particularly interested in design standards, according to John Hand, a San Luis Obispo County planner. "The most frequent comment we heard from residents is that they wanted the town to look funky," he said. At least four businesses that were demolished, including the Sea Barn boutique, the Custom House restaurant, Cafe Avila and Mr. Rick's, a bar, will be rebuilt where they originally stood. One "historic" building, the otherwise unremarkable Avila Market, returned to town on the back of a truck, and was reinstated on its former spot. "It's a link to the old Avila," said Hand. In fact, there is much in Avila Beach that will be for the better when the reconstruction is complete. (The rebuilding of Front Street, a one-sided street facing the ocean, is already finished.) The community has designated a new park on the northern edge of the beach and set aside a hillside on the south as open space. As mentioned above, the town has removed the cars from a one-block area of Front Street, creating a direct pedestrian route through a shopping area, across Front Street and to the Avila Beach Pier. Along the street is a new "water feature," a sort of artificial tide pool made out of sandstone paving that fills with sea water from the action of the tide. Another fine new touch is a set of wiggly walls located at the inland end of the beach, where visitors can take off their shoes to walk on the sand, or just sit and look at the ocean. The maximum height on Front Street has been raised from a single story to 25 feet, allowing the possibility of some larger, beachfront hotels. And there are no plans to replace a 46-unit mobilehome park, whose former residents have found new homes in town or elsewhere. Other details may rankle planners, such as the survival of a surface parking lot in the center of town. Even with the proposed landscape camouflage of the parking lot, this is a poor choice. Hand, the county planner, said local residents discussed and rejected the idea of a parking structure. Here, the tensions between Avila Beach's dual identity — regional beach destination and self-contained community — have caused a tear in the urban fabric. Structured parking with ground-level retail would have been a "better" solution, enhancing the pedestrian scale and probably providing more parking spaces. But residents wanted the parking lot to stay a parking lot. The residents of Avila Beach did not want to erase their city; they wanted to rebuild it. Cities contain our memories, and as such are part of our identity. I wish Avila Beach had been willing to go further in making a coherent urban design. But the presence of a parking lot was more important to them than a fine new street lined with shops. While that is strange, even perverse, to outsiders, this attachment to place is also the lifeblood of planning because it represents the human connection to places, even mediocre ones. The difference between planners and regular folks is that planners look at a city as a problem needing to be solved, while everyone else see a community filled with spaces that hold meaning. I hate that parking lot, but that does not mean keeping it was the wrong decision for Avila Beach.