Tuesday, June 29, 2004
New Urbanists Meet in Chicago
The Congress for the New Urbanism's annual meeting attracted nearly 1,400 planners and developers to Chicago, where they could see for themselves density, mixed uses, and rail transit. Unfortunately, in my humble opinion, few of them understood what they saw.
The Chicago Tribune quotes one of them as saying of the region's rail lines, "To have this wonderful subway system, light rail lines, and to see it actually work." Never mind that Chicago has no light rail; to say that the region's transit system "actulaly works" ignores the fact that Chicago transit has lost nearly 20 percent of its riders in the last fifteen years.
Someone else said, "I don't think there are many places you can drive this far and not see sprawl." Of course, there aren't many urban areas in the U.S. as large as Chicago. But Chicago has suffered (or enjoyed, depending on your point of view) a huge suburbanization of residents and jobs in the last four decades. In the 1990s, for example, the urban area gained more than 300,000 jobs, but Chicago itself lost 18,000 jobs.
A researcher who works for the Congress for the New Urbanism was quoted as saying, "This is a group of people who get the complexities of places." In fact, they don't get it. Cities are not only more complicated than we understand, they are more complicated than we can understand. Planners who think they understand cities and can design utopias are fooling themselves.
As it happens, I attended part of this conference and was repeatedly amazed at how naive many people were. Participants would spout theories without backing them up with facts. They would repeat dogmas that everyone else at the conference believed to be true even though anyone with access to data easily found on the web could prove them false.
For example, at one session an aerial photographer, Alex MacLean, showed photo after photo of "sprawl" which he lambasted because it was ugly, auto dependent, or otherwise violated New Urban principles. Of course, the residents and users of these areas rarely look at them from the air and in fact find them essential for their day-to-day needs.
Some of them heard me but many did not. I hope we can continue the dialog with those who aren't so interested in controlling other people's lives regardless of what those people want.
The Chicago Tribune quotes one of them as saying of the region's rail lines, "To have this wonderful subway system, light rail lines, and to see it actually work." Never mind that Chicago has no light rail; to say that the region's transit system "actulaly works" ignores the fact that Chicago transit has lost nearly 20 percent of its riders in the last fifteen years.
Someone else said, "I don't think there are many places you can drive this far and not see sprawl." Of course, there aren't many urban areas in the U.S. as large as Chicago. But Chicago has suffered (or enjoyed, depending on your point of view) a huge suburbanization of residents and jobs in the last four decades. In the 1990s, for example, the urban area gained more than 300,000 jobs, but Chicago itself lost 18,000 jobs.
A researcher who works for the Congress for the New Urbanism was quoted as saying, "This is a group of people who get the complexities of places." In fact, they don't get it. Cities are not only more complicated than we understand, they are more complicated than we can understand. Planners who think they understand cities and can design utopias are fooling themselves.
As it happens, I attended part of this conference and was repeatedly amazed at how naive many people were. Participants would spout theories without backing them up with facts. They would repeat dogmas that everyone else at the conference believed to be true even though anyone with access to data easily found on the web could prove them false.
For example, at one session an aerial photographer, Alex MacLean, showed photo after photo of "sprawl" which he lambasted because it was ugly, auto dependent, or otherwise violated New Urban principles. Of course, the residents and users of these areas rarely look at them from the air and in fact find them essential for their day-to-day needs.
- Big-box stores that New Urbanists consider ugly sell a wide variety of low-cost goods to people who might not otherwise be able to afford those goods.
- Cul de sacs that violate New Urbanist ideas about "connectivity" in fact protect neighborhoods from crime and traffic accidents.
- Suburban homes that appear "cookie cutter" from the air in fact are highly customized by their residents (and the cookie-cutter epithet could just as easily be applied to many New Urban developments).
Some of them heard me but many did not. I hope we can continue the dialog with those who aren't so interested in controlling other people's lives regardless of what those people want.
Comments:
On point is the comments by Peter Gordon and Harry Richardson...
THE SPRAWL DEBATE: LET MARKETS PLAN By
Peter Gordon
And
Harry W. Richardson
University of Southern California
New Urbanism. This is the polar opposite of the anti-sprawl position. Smart growth advocates see “ a growing sense that the suburban paradigm, which has dominated since the 1940s and 1950s, cannot sustain another generation of growth.”35 Peter Calthorpe36 is specific when he suggests a New Urbanism where “there should be defined edges (i.e., Urban Growth Boundaries), the circulation system should function for the pedestrian (i.e, supported by regional transit systems), public space should be formative rather than residual (i.e., preservation of major open-space networks), civic and private domains should form a complementary hierarchy (i.e, related cultural centers, commercial districts and residential neighborhoods) and population and use should be diverse (i.e., created by adequate affordable housing and a jobs/housing balance).” There is little analysis or discussion of the costs, the implied trade-offs, the consistency between the various proposals, or even the consumer’s desire for such forms. There is no anxiety over the loss of property rights, nor over their politicization. The repetitive use of the word “should” means do what I tell you: I know better.
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THE SPRAWL DEBATE: LET MARKETS PLAN By
Peter Gordon
And
Harry W. Richardson
University of Southern California
New Urbanism. This is the polar opposite of the anti-sprawl position. Smart growth advocates see “ a growing sense that the suburban paradigm, which has dominated since the 1940s and 1950s, cannot sustain another generation of growth.”35 Peter Calthorpe36 is specific when he suggests a New Urbanism where “there should be defined edges (i.e., Urban Growth Boundaries), the circulation system should function for the pedestrian (i.e, supported by regional transit systems), public space should be formative rather than residual (i.e., preservation of major open-space networks), civic and private domains should form a complementary hierarchy (i.e, related cultural centers, commercial districts and residential neighborhoods) and population and use should be diverse (i.e., created by adequate affordable housing and a jobs/housing balance).” There is little analysis or discussion of the costs, the implied trade-offs, the consistency between the various proposals, or even the consumer’s desire for such forms. There is no anxiety over the loss of property rights, nor over their politicization. The repetitive use of the word “should” means do what I tell you: I know better.
