Frank Gruber of the Huffington Post wrote a reflective article about why New Urbanism is so misunderstood as he is about to take part of the 17th Annual Congress for New Urbanism (CNU). The article gives a great refresher to those that are not familiar with the concept of New Urbanism and then dives into the opposing critiques that some have over this relatively new concept. Gruber states:"Well, to begin with, New Urbanists are attacked from both sides of America's cultural divide. Chances are, if you mention New Urbanism to group of forward thinking, contemporary design professionals, whether architects or planners, they will roll their eyes. To them New Urbanism, because so many of its practitioners make their livings designing new towns and developments outside of existing cities, is a facilitator of sprawl, not a solution. Then, because many of these towns and developments feature traditional architecture, New Urbanism is hopelessly nostalgic.
But if you find yourself among a group of conservatives or libertarians, such as Randal O'Toole of the Independence Institutes's Center for the American Dream, and who writes for the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation, and you mention New Urbanism, you'll just as likely unleash a denunciation on the grounds that New Urbanism aims to thwart the natural desire of Americans to live in a single-family house on a cul-de-sac. "My view would definitely fit within the former and certainly do not agree with the latter half of that quote. Sometimes I feel bad for the New Urbanists because I feel their concepts gets co-opted by others who dub bad developments as "New Urbanist" projects to get them approved or sell. On the other hand though, the founders of New Urbanism have built more New Urbanist projects in suburban locales than urban ones. Whether this is just a function of suburban locales having more funds to do a New Urbanist project or just fewer obstacles to get the project done, could be the reason for this disparity.While many contemporary design professionals think New Urbanism is a facilitator of sprawl, I somewhat disagree. As a planner who's districts covers urban, suburban and rural locales, I think New Urbanist projects can be a positive influence for suburban developments. No matter how much as planners that we dislike sprawl, it is going to happen. I'd rather have a suburban development that is centered with a focus and a grid pattern than an amorphous blob of tract housing that lacks any focal point.My main beef with New Urbanism is implementation. It's great to have guiding principles but actually putting them in place deals with political, social and economic issues that New Urbanism tends to try to duck away from. My belief is that the bad urban form or our cities and suburbs comes from populations always trying to seek separation from others who have different political, social and economic values. The built form of where the people who seek separation reflects that. Unless we deal those barriers first we will always have communities who seek to rid sidewalks, build streets for cars over the needs of people and seek land use layout that fortify inhabitants from the outside world rather then welcome it. Until that happens you will always have those who state the natural desire for Americans is a suburban cul-de-sac.What are your thoughts?
Cooperation
City Planners tend to be the Jack or Jill of all trades and masters of none them. I know a lot of professions say this but I think this holds especially true for city planners. We have to know a little about architecture, landscape architecture, civil engineering, historical preservation, sociology and cultural history. Knowing all these different fields of study often puts us in contact with a wide range of professionals, community groups, liaison groups, activists and semi-government institutions. Now getting all these different entities that sometimes have conflicting interests to cooperate for a common purpose can be difficult. But do you know who often presents the most difficulties in cooperation…your own government.
That’s right, this tale of a city planner will deal with the cooperation (or lack thereof) of the local government. One of the most challenging issues to deal with is when we have complete unison from the community and all it’s stakeholders to move forward on a particular project and one of your local government agencies refuses to budge or even listen to your concerns. Why would one government agency just totally ignore another government agency from the same government, you ask? Let me back up here a second.
There is a popular belief out there that government agencies group together to conspire grand plans of its own desires. Nooo. Local government agencies are run like autonomous agencies that fight each other for funding from the golden faucet like newborn pups fighting to get milk. In fact you may be saddened to know that a lot of times government agencies have no idea what the other agency is doing or if they are replicating the same work. Agencies work a lot like families. There are some family members that you are really cool with. Then there are family members you avoid and when they ask you to do something, “you’ll get back to them.”
But you really can’t explain to the public that the reason their request got denied is because another agency doesn’t agree with your position or just flat out ignored you without making government look incompetent. Because if you do, they will look at you like you are an idiot….”what do you mean this government agency wouldn’t allow you to do it…you are government!” *Sighs* If only it were that simple.
In defense of other agencies, Planners are usually the only agency who consistently coming up with new ways on how to do other people’s jobs. For example, to employ New Urbanist principles, a public works agency would to have make changes ranging from minor to radical on how they regulate their traffic policies and safety. This could possibly require increased planning for individual projects and the elimination of boilerplate comments for that agency. If you work for public works you most likely feel that your current process for regulating traffic is fine and why change your process for the wacky whims of a planner to make communities walk better.
And you know, we get it. We wouldn’t want some other agency telling us how we should do our jobs. All we ask is for a little cooperation. The job of planner is not typical, it is wide ranging. We can not only just focus on traffic or just open space or just land use. We have to focus on the whole picture…which means we may aggravate more then a few agencies. Although some of them are cool, you know who you are, “you’re cool.”
So how can we make other agencies cooperate more to ultimately achieve our wishes or the community’s wishes? Well there is no silver bullet but I believe that as planners we probably have to take the step of being more accessible and transparent to…our own government. And by that I mean we have to show how recommendations are tied into a bigger picture and show that there is community support. Whether this is done by a Facebook page or a blog, we as planners have to do a better job in selling the message. The reason for that is that our message is complicated. We can not “boilerplate” our comments. The solution for one failing solution may worsen the problem for another failing intersection.
To add on to planners’ complicated message, we are the clearing house for messy government problems and random citizen inquiry. We may not be able to fix the problem but we probably know somebody who can fix the problem…with a little cooperation. Well, I hoped you enjoyed this tale of a city planner and please feel free to let me know if you have had any similar experiences and how you have dealt with cooperation in your profession. And as always,
Thanks for reading!
This swipe was taken from an article from Nerve.com in 2006.Here are some selected gems:I'm moving out of my scummy bachelor pad and I want my new apartment and neighborhood to be chick-friendly. What should I look for?Use ArcGIS (Geographic Information System software) to map out the spatial distribution of female residents in your age group in that area. Choosing an area with a high concentration of women will not only meet your immediate needs, it will also provide easy access to future girlfriends in the event that you find one and she dumps you.My boyfriend can't seem to find my g-spot. What are the best positions to make sure he's hitting it squarely?If you aren't able to figure out the spatial configuration of your partnership, try drawing conceptual plans of the two of you in various positions. That should be effective and make you laugh.How can becoming an urban planner help me get laid?Urban planning opens the door to the exciting male-dominated world of architects, builders and engineers. Merge those parcels. And for men, saying you're an urban planner is at least cooler than being an accountant.How can I get an urban planner to go home with me?Talk shit about Wal-Mart, brag about your frequent public-transport ridership and drop phrases like "spatial morphology."How can I delay my orgasm, besides going slow and taking breaks?Recite the twenty-one principles of New Urbanism in your head over and over again.Read the whole article, here.
