Friends and foes debate the New Urbanism

Whether you measure the New Urbanism (NU) by the diversity of its enemies, or by the power of its friends, it has come a long way in 1999, the year suburban sprawl was elevated to a national issue. Environmental groups, the vice president, the national media, governors, mayors, homebuilders, developers, architects, academics, and even senators are talking about sprawl. Time magazine recently called the debate “The Brawl Over Sprawl,” and pundits are lining up to attack, and defend, both conventional suburban development (CSD) and the New Urbanism. NU is embroiled in the debate because it offers the only viable, widely accepted alternative to CSD (“smart growth” notwithstanding —when that vague term is defined, it often is described as mixed-use, compact, human-scale development, i.e. NU). Enemies of NU include organized, articulate defenders of sprawl, and some who hate sprawl. Politically, the New Urbanism is being attacked from the right and from the left. Yet, NU also has powerful friends. The following is New Urban News’ subjective report on who has taken sides for and against the New Urbanism, and who is sitting on the sidelines in the raging debate over sprawl. The sprawl defenders Pro-sprawlers come in a variety of stripes. Since Democratic vice president Al Gore has come out against sprawl, some conservative pundits and think tanks have come to sprawl’s defense. These include the Heritage Foundation, which published an anti-new urbanist diatribe, and columnist George Will, who railed against “smart growth.” Making similar arguments are some Libertarians, notably Randal O’Toole and the Reason Foundation, who have been attacking the New Urbanism (or their interpretation of the trend) relentlessly for a couple of years. Pro-sprawl conservatives and Libertarians argue that NU means more government regulation and control, and that it will reduce people’s housing choices and drive up the cost of living. A third group of sprawl defenders comes from academia, most notably Peter Gordon and Harry Richardson of the University of Southern California. They contend that compact cities are archaic and obsolete, and that people desire conventional suburbia, not the New Urbanism. The sprawl defenders tend to characterize the New Urbanism in simplistic terms. According to Wendell Cox of the Heritage Foundation, new urbanists are in favor of five things: 1) Urban growth boundaries; 2) “Infill” development; 3) Higher density, and concentration of development along rail corridors; 4) Little if any expansion of streets or highways; 5) Retail developments less oriented toward the automobile, which he defines as “smaller stores with less parking in town centers rather than suburbs.” The NU/sprawl issue is not a simple political fault line, with conservatives on one side and liberals on the other. Conservatives, as a group, do not necessarily find sprawl any more appealing than anyone else. They, too, get tired of being chauffeurs to children, and driving down ugly commercial strip corridors. Furthermore, the idea of designing neighborhoods where people can get to know one another has “family values” appeal. Favorable articles on the New Urbanism have appeared in the conservative magazines the Weekly Standard, American Enterprise, and National Review. Republican politicians avoid defending sprawl. A few, like Bret Schundler, mayor of Jersey City, strongly support new urbanist planning. Schundler claims that NU will prevail in the market because it satisfies a fundamental desire for human-scale places. Attacks from the left The new urbanists also have enemies in the academy and among the architectural elite. This group appears to view the New Urbanism through the narrow focus of Seaside and Celebration, developments which they regard as retrograde, bordering on fascist. David Harvey, a professor of geography at Johns Hopkins University, writes in a New Urbanism critique that the very idea of nurturing community is dangerous. “From the very earliest phases of massive urbanization through industrialization, ‘the spirit of community’ has been held as an antidote to any threat of social disorder, class war and revolutionary violence. ‘Community’ has ever been one of the key sites of social control and surveillance bordering on overt social repression.” More specifically, sociologist Richard Sennett dismisses new urbanist communities as “kitschy, pseudo-communities that … provide little home for differences of the kind that lead to conflicts of ethnicity, race, class, or sexual preference.” Reed Kroloff, editor-in-chief of Architecture magazine, speaks for many architecture writers and critics when he belittles new urbanist developments as “the very embodiment of Mayberry mentality.” Kroloff also pushes the New Urbanism-is-fascism argument in a commentary piece in which he discusses The Truman Show, a popular 1998 movie filmed at Seaside. The story is about Truman Burbank, a character who unknowingly spends his life trapped in a stage-set town where his friends and neighbors are all actors, and every minute of his life is broadcast on a 24-hour television show. According to Kroloff, living in a new urbanist community requires giving up identity, freedom, and variety — and hence is analogous to the life of Truman Burbank. It’s probably the breadth of changes that New Urbanism is proposing that makes it a target for attacks from such diverse and differing groups. According to conservative critics, the New Urbanism is oppressive because of what it ostensibly doesn’t offer — i.e. large lots on cul-de-sacs — and according to academic and architectural critics, NU is oppressive because of what it does offer — community and stability. NU proponents Besides the organized support of 1,700 members of the Congress for the New Urbanism, NU has many other allies who have considerable clout. NU’s most powerful ally right now may be the mainstream media. General assignment reporters, who don’t carry a lot of ideological baggage and have never been indoctrinated with architectural dogma, relate to the common-sense side of NU. The honeymoon with the media has lasted 10 years. Few new urbanist projects have received much negative press, the exception being Celebration. But Celebration’s negative press has focused on schools and homeowner covenants, not the planning principles. The town itself has gotten mostly positive media coverage in mainstream publications and broadcasts. National environmental groups more recently have become allies of the New Urbanism — either directly, or indirectly by supporting smart growth. The Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club, and the Natural Resources Defense Council all have issued strongly worded reports attacking sprawl and favoring compact development. The new urbanists also have a lot of friends in the inner city, the most important being the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and a growing number of mayors. The new urbanists won over HUD just in time for the implementation of Hope 6, the redevelopment of the nation’s most troubled public housing projects. This program is giving new urbanists their first opportunities to build large-scale neighborhoods in cities. Inner city and environmental supporters lend new urbanists a degree of moral authority. Critics will be hard pressed to make the argument that NU is, say, bad for the environment, or elitist and antiurban (all of those arguments have been made), when NU has the support of environmentalists, HUD, and mayors. The smart growth movement, which includes governors, local officials, environmentalists (the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is a sponsor of the Smart Growth Network), and developers, is a powerful ally of NU. Many who would not, or could not, support NU directly, can sign on to smart growth, which is less controversial (who is in favor of “dumb growth?”). Smart growth leads to NU, or at least should make planning and building new urbanist projects easier in many cases. Sitting on the fence Some of the most important players in the brawl over sprawl are not actively taking sides. Trade and professional organizations like the Urban Land Institute (ULI), the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the American Planning Association (APA), the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) officially take a neutral stand with regard to the New Urbanism. However, all of these groups have taken significant steps to study the New Urbanism and inform their members about the trend. ULI, which represents developers, APA, and AIA have created smart growth and livable communities programs. The NAHB has developed a smart growth policy and the ITE created a manual on designing streets for traditional neighborhoods. Nevertheless, the members of these organizations still predominantly work on CSD, and of these groups, the NAHB has most aggressively defended sprawl in response to attacks from environmentalists. Last but not least, the New Urbanism has no shortage of constructive critics, who believe in some or all of NU’s goals — but contend that NU has serious flaws. Chief among these is Alex Krieger, chairman of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Krieger is concerned that new urbanist “new towns” like Celebration and Kentlands may actually undermine the revitalization of cities. “This is my two (urban) ships passing in the night nightmare,” he wrote in Architecture last November. “The possibility of a new urbanism impeding the rebounding of some old urbanism — not old in appearance, but in location.” The new urbanists have labored to convince critics like Krieger that NU is committed to revitalization of cities. The 1999 Congress for the New Urbanism was devoted almost entirely to cities. But as long as people are buying homes in new towns, new urbanists will not give up their greenfield work, especially since the CNU Charter calls for “the reconfiguration of sprawling suburbs into communities with real neighborhoods.” The friends of NU currently outnumber the enemies. But NU proponents need to hone their arguments and answer the critics — because the key will be winning over those who are reserving judgment. Ultimately, the strongest argument will be the performance of projects, and the success of NU’s ideas in solving real problems.