Good urbanism is criminal in most American towns & cities
Good urbanism is criminal in most American towns & cities
It's almost impossible to go into any community in the United States and build traditional urbanism without having to change the codes and the regulations.
Urbanism Speakeasy demystifies the jargon of the built environment, so you can see clearly how to create happy & healthy communities. The content of this pub is the equivalent of getting a new How-To book every month on Amazon. If that’s valuable to you, please consider a paid subscription.
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Anyone who believes in the traditional urbanism practiced for 10,000 years is a planning industry outlaw. Members of the new urbanist movement practice civil disobedience because we promote ideas that are contrary to thousands of federal, state, and local laws.
It's almost impossible to go into any community in the United States and build traditional urbanism without having to change the codes and the regulations. Good urban form clashes with the institutional and business practices.
The language mainstream planners and engineers use complicates everything. The status quo uses terms that sound consistent with new urbanism, but they’re generally deceitful at best.
“Neighborhood character” sounds adorable, but it’s just a polite way of saying “those people can’t live next to me.”
Terms like "multimodal accommodations” sound like places to walk, ride bikes, ride skateboards, use a bus, or a personal car. In practice, it means “we prioritize a variety of vehicle types, and you can walk if you feel like it.”
Good is the enemy of mainstream
At its core, good settlement design fosters connectedness between buildings, streets, neighborhoods, and cities. It prioritizes social encounters and promotes compact settlement forms that cater to people rather than vehicles. You can see a clear difference when comparing the scale and design of cities in the United States to older parts of the world, such as Europe and the Middle East.
Designing with a humanist approach is crucial. The transportation modes (besides foot traffic) are secondary, because it’s the walkability factor that plays a significant role in creating vibrant and livable communities. Design for walking, and you magically get pedestrians.
Being a reformer
Genuine reform requires speaking the truth plainly, bluntly, and without hesitation. In a society where truth is often seen as relative, speaking out against the status quo is essential to break the cycle of power preservation.
Challenge assumptions. Provoke institutional change. Drive the experts to better urbanism.
I keep reading blogs suggesting reform will come from within the industry, but that seems absurd to me. Reform is a rejection of the status quo, and planners who reject the status quo had better be prepared for a career outside the status quo.
In some European countries, architects are able to take charge of planning because they aren’t siloed into rigid specialization categories the way Americans are. It’s easier to be a vocal champion of good urbanism if you’re outside the urbanism industry. You don’t have to worry about clients withholding contracts or professional organizations uninviting you from speaking.
Outsiders are probably the best bet to get us an urbanism overhaul from the classrooms to the boardrooms to the streets.
Start here
Good urbanism is criminal in most American towns and cities. Land use regulations are one easy place to start, because deleting words in an ordinance doesn’t take up space in a budget. The ROI of your efforts will be huge. For example, if you can get locals to overturn minimum parking requirements or legalize duplexes and townhouses, you’ll be well on your way to good urbanism.
If you’re looking for a bumper sticker slogan to get started, let me help:
We are going to need some new Jane Jacobs’. She was of course an outsider that shook up the professions. Planning took up her ideals of mixed use, walkable places, but ignored everything about process reform and economics.
Look, the blunt reality is professions never reform themselves. There’s simply no good reason to do so. The more convoluted everything is, the more you need credentialed professionals to do the work for you.
Pressure has to come from outside. That’s either big grass roots pressure, or top-down pressure from somewhere else. We’ve begun to see inklings of both.