| “There is a growing tendency among architects and planners to return to practices that create a sense of place and community in the built environment,” I wrote in May 1996, in the first issue of New Urban News. I am happy to report a decade later that the words still ring true. More than ever, the New Urbanism is having a profoundly positive effect on planning and development practice both in the US and abroad.
It was clear to me when I launched New Urban News that the trend known as New Urbanism was more than a fad. Yet the prevailing view at the time was that New Urbanism was, at best, exotic and quixotic — an interesting idea flying in the face of market realities and real-world practice. At worst New Urbanism was viewed as a threat to the land use and design establishment and their ideas that had held sway for half a century.
Moreover, new urbanists had painted a huge target on their chests. Not only had they proclaimed that a trillion-dollar land use industry and its regulatory framework were seriously flawed and that the greatest architecture and urban design theorists of the 20th century had made huge mistakes. They had also — immediately after the first issue of New Urban News came out — signed a charter of principles and tested those principles by designing and building projects.
All those who had financial or intellectual investments in the status quo could freely attack the principles and the projects of New Urbanism and the often yawning gulf between idealistic concepts and the messy reality. New urbanists stood accused of: imposing idealism on the free market, social engineering, harming cities by building faux-urban towns, trying to force people to live in high-rise buildings, and promoting retrograde architecture.
PRACTICAL CHALLENGES
Notwithstanding the merits of those criticisms, the biggest challenges to New Urbanism were practical: How does one get mixed-use, urban projects approved and financed in a regulatory environment that favors single-use sprawl? How can modern retail work in a downtown or on a main street? How to build walkable streets within a transportation planning system focused on automobiles, and prove that these thoroughfares are safe? The issues were endless.
The New Urbanism could easily have foundered on the shoals of such tough criticism and merciless reality. Instead, the last 10 years have been a story of rising to the challenges. Accused of promoting “new suburbanism”? New urbanists designed and built hundreds of infill projects. Accused of forcing people to live in a single environment? They developed the Transect. Faced with hostile zoning codes? They got form-based codes approved in scores of jurisdictions.
One by one, new urbanists have won over critics. The Urban Land Institute, representing the development industry, has promoted new urban principles for years. The American Planning Association is advocating form-based codes and mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups select largely new urban projects as examples of good development. Academia is probably the biggest holdout (see report on the home page of this issue), but new urbanists are winning converts even there.
Significant challenges remain. Making good urbanism affordable, especially in light of today’s sky-high housing costs, is a major objective. The battles over zoning, street standards, and transportation planning have barely begun.
And what about New Urban News? As I write in our new downtown Ithaca offices, we are still growing. This month we will publish the SmartCode & Manual, a work of brilliance by Andres Duany, William Wright, and Sandy Sorlien. Additionally, this year we expect to complete our Directory of the New Urbanism and the Fourth Edition of New Urbanism: Comprehensive Report & Best Practices Guide.
Ten years ago, it seemed a surer bet that the New Urbanism would still be around in 2006 than that New Urban News would survive, given the high failure rate of new publications. I’m thrilled that we are both here, and doing better than ever.
This article is available in the January/February 2006 issue of New Urban News, along with many more articles not available online. Subscribe or order the individual issue. |