Posted on 10/26/2005 6:55:53 PM PDT by hedgetrimmer
Mississippi government officials are asking prominent New Urbanist city planners for help in rebuilding their communities following the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina. The results will obviously differ from one community to another, but one thing is certain: New Urbanism will not be good for Mississippi.
Why bring in the New Urbanists?
“We got (new urbanists) because they were good task leaders in getting large groups of people together, not for new urbanism. These (local) people don't need anybody to come and tell them how to do their jobs.” So says Jim Barksdale, the former Netscape CEO appointed by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour to head the Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal Commission.
But others are seeking to incorporate the design ideas of New Urbanism (NU) into Mississippi’s newly-rebuilt communities.
“This place has lost its neighborhood structure over the last 50 years,” said Andrés Duany, a Miami architect who is known as the “father” of New Urbanism. “This is a chance to rezone it in a much finer grain, so people can walk to the corner store, kids can walk to school.”
What is New Urbanism?
New Urbanism (NU) is a school of planning and architectural design that forms the foundation of Smart Growth (SG), which is concerned with legal and political enforcement of the NU standards. With strong, centralized design based around neighborhood centers, NU seeks to design self-sufficient communities where any citizen can live, work and play all within a small radius. The idea is that people thrive in these types of “villages” (as planners sometimes call them), with the added benefit that people are no longer dependent on their automobiles. The more ambitious NU plans call for entire cities to be restructured around a public transit system, with train or bus stations at the center of each neighborhood “village”.
With design aspects like this, NU conjures bucolic images of a time – and place – long past. In addition, many of NU’s advocates are adamantly opposed to the use of automobiles. For them, the automobile is responsible for creating “sprawl”, the suburbs, and smog, while destroying cohesive neighborhood community life. NU offers a solution to these ills by recreating the “good, old days” again, but with bolder colors and a more modern feel.
How will New Urbanism create problems for Gulf Coast communities?
By focusing new city planning designs on transit-dependent infrastructure, New Urbanism discards all the benefits that come from owning a vehicle. A recent study published by the University of California linked personal ownership of automobiles with upward mobility and found that families and individuals in poverty-stricken minority groups would benefit the most from owning their own car. In Mississippi, where 18.9% of the population lives beneath the poverty level and where racial tension is high, NU plans that aim to reduce automobile use will only serve to perpetuate high poverty levels and exacerbate racial division.
In fact, the NU communities with a heavy emphasis on public transit will have another significant liability: residents that are dependent on public transit will have difficulty evacuating the area if another natural catastrophe strikes the area. As noted by transportation expert and Smart Growth critic Randal O’Toole, “People with cars can leave before a storm hits. When earthquakes or other unpredictable events take place, people with cars can move away from areas that lack food, safe water or other essentials. What made New Orleans vulnerable was that a third of its households do not own an automobile.”
Conclusion
On October 11th, Jim Barksdale told the Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal Commission that "None of us wants to look back 20 years from now and realize we allowed ourselves to get locked into a rebuilding process that failed to take advantage of the clean slate, the clear opportunity we have right now. It's the worst possible time. But the opportunity makes it the best possible time.”
If Mississippians decide to restructure their lives and communities according to the design principles of New Urbanism and Smart Growth, they will find themselves increasingly vulnerable to natural disasters and will actually inhibit the dynamic social and economic growth they desperately need right now.
It is hard to imagine a more spectacular way to botch such a tremendous opportunity.
Everybody out!
PING
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We don't hate big cities, we merely reject them. :-)
We tend to dislike mass transit only in places where it doesn't work. On the east coast it seems to work. On the west coast it does not.
the new urbanists run rampant over property rights and personal privacy. Those are two major problems.
I lived in Long Beach, CA for many years and thought that was one of the best planned cities. We had our schools, a park, police station, post office and groceries within walking distance of any home in the city.
Unfortunately school bussing destroyed the whole concept.
The best way to obtain better community design and retard urban sprawl is to get rid of zoning. Most communities were compact and were pedestrian and transit friendly until zoning became widely adopted following WWII. Once local planning boards got zoning powers, they increased minimum lot widths to 70, 80, and 100 feet or more and lot areas to 10,000 or 20,000 sq ft or more. Once you get lots that big, you can kiss walking to neighborhood elementary schools and corner stores goodbye. There is no longer the required population within walking distance to support neighborhood schools, parks, stores, and workplaces. Zoning is the problem, NOT the solution. Get rid of these regulations and let the free market dictate what gets built and where. We might all be pleasantly surprised. Do you really think that private developers WANT to build 1/2 acre suburban lots?
Simple. We've lived there and left; used it and been disgusted by it. You can keep it.
And correct, there are a thousand reasons why New Urbanism is utter BS that aren't mentioned is this article.
Because mass transit is a money sucking system that taxes inhabitants of poorer rural counties to benefit wealthier urban populations?
New Urbanism is an attempt to recreate the US in the image of Europe, which is plain stupid because it ignores the vast expanses of the US, especially in the western states.
I don't have a problem with cities, I have a problem being taxed for infrastructure where I don't live, while the state ignores the failing bridges where I do live. If mass transit is so wonderful, how come ridership is so low it has to be subsidized?
As usual, the planners don't ask us how we want to live, they tell us how they think we ought to live. No Thanks.
Real classy of these folks to take advantage of a disaster to impose their secular religion on the victims thereof.
How so? Not being provocative but curious.
I am deeply suspicious of anything which is 'centrally planned', but some of their ideas, from what I've read, make sense. I've seen several cities stateside which have made no attempt to integrate their transportation networks - such as rail systems which run near an airport but have no way of connecting between the two. The Europeans (God help me I'm about to praise Europeans) tend to have more pedestrian friendly downtowns and convenient rail systems, though this is likely more a function of the age of their cities and the population density of their countries than anything else.
Here's hoping they hire *exclusively* New Urbanist planners for the rebuilding effort.
That's exactly how I feel about living in the country. I spent 8 long years in a small East Texas town with a population of 882. The most miserable years of my life. Then whooo-hoooo, moved to Jasper Texas, with sub-10,000 pop and found it was no better. I've been in Dallas the last 2 years, and this place is heaven compared to the sticks.
Mass transit just makes sense for urban populations. Good sense. It's one of the few things that Europe does really well.
I'm not sure I agree. I'm not really prepared to refute your arguments, but while it's not scientific, I'm not fond of Houston which has no zoning laws.
But you can't plan and build a "downtown" from the ground up any more than you can an entire economy.
Yeah, there's nothing quite like the Dallas City Council to make one think that one lives in a truly "progressive" community.
Unfortunately, you are taxing me for your transit services. Not something I can enthusiasticly support. I have no problem with cities building light rails or having bus fleets. I do object to them not charging the full cost to their riders and then making up the difference through state wide gas taxes as is done in my home state of Oregon.
You want to arrange your life around a train or bus schedule, knock yourself out, just stop charging me for it.
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