More on the “is New Urbanism a good idea?” theme. Comments welcome, below:
Longtime west Charlotte activist Sue Friday sent this note:
“I just don’t think anyone should be advocating new urbanism. I doubt you and I could afford to live in Seaside. The problem with NU is that it encourages people to set themselves up in elitist communities and feel good about it. Birkdale, built away from everything out in a cow pasture and on the wrong side of 77 is a prime example. I think part of its “charm” is exclusivity — price and distance from undesirable people. Places like that damage Charlotte, drain off strength, $, and energy. It would be so much more exciting if it had been done as redevelopment in some of the older, poorer neighborhoods accessible to everyone. What has been done to the northern end of the county and the small towns there is inexcusable. The worst part is how smug so many of the planners and developers are because they can paste on a NU label.”
I disagree. Here’s my response:
“Lord knows, there’s plenty of elitist development going on around Charlotte, and most of it isn’t New Urbanist at all. I don’t think it’s fair to condemn New Urbanism because it’s being applied, in many cases, in suburban locations like Birkdale. In Charlotte, the ‘burbs are where almost all the large-scale development is going on. Why condemn New Urbanism — one style of design — just because it’s being used in greenfield development? Would you rather have a Birkdale looking the way it does, or have another standard-issue regional shopping mall there, a la Northlake?
Yes, we’d both prefer that more development was happening in older, poorer neighborhoods. But it isn’t Birkdale’s New Urbanist design that caused it to be built where it is or target the markets that it does. The villain in that is the whole larger picture of metro-area development economics.
Since suburban development is going to happen anyway — much as you and I would prefer to see underused, in-town sites developed instead –why shouldn’t it be better designed, better for the environment, more suited to support public transit and more like the neighborhoods that have stood the test of time? Plenty of New Urbanist developments aren’t elitist — although Seaside sure isn’t among them. One key New Urbanism principle is to include a range of housing at a range of prices, by including more “affordable” options: apartments over stores, garage apartments and live-work units, etc. etc. Seaside has those places, but Seaside got so popular even the tiny places built to be “affordable” aren’t, any more.
Like you, I like places with more age on them. They have more soul. I’d much rather live in Elizabeth than Baxter. I’m not going to be attracted to anything new, even New Urbanist new. But new stuff keeps getting built. And I think New Urbanism is a better option for it than replicating Piper Glen or Hunter Oaks or Foxcroft the ga-zillions of subdivisions named for the landscapes the developer destroys.
The head of the Knight Program for Community Building at University of Miami, where I have a yearlong fellowship, sent a note responding to comments from one or two fellows who criticized New Urbanist developments because they aren’t redeveloping existing city neighborhoods, etc. His name is Chuck Bohl. Here’s what he wrote:
“In the words of one new urbanist realist, ‘New Urbanism cannot prevent tooth decay.’ It is not a panacea for all of the challenges of community building, and neither is zoning, housing policy, traffic engineering, social services, economic development, community development and environmental regulation in a vacuum.
“New urbanism restores physical planning and design to the toolkit, and, rather than the urban renewal and heroic Modernist architecture and planning of the 1960s, it espouses relearning how to make walkable, mixed-use places with an attractive public realm of great streets and public gathering places, civic institutions, and a mix of housing types. [New Urbanist] principles have been applied to HOPE VI [public housing] projects, manufactured housing neighborhoods, and all manner of urban infill.”