28 April 2008

City Journal New Urbanist Critique

City Journal article about New Urbanists tells them to quit talking about global warming and be cool. By being cool, she means: get the buy-in from the community and work at transforming community from the bottom up (as opposed to working from the top by changing zoning or lending rules for example):

The New Urbanism and suburban sprawl have something in common: they’re uncool. New Urbanism is uncool because it is basically traditional; modernism is still the thing in architecture...

Why all the worry about what’s cool? ...In many ways it’s a conservative approach to building communities, which probably accounts for its not being in fashion.
....
... “there’s no indication that the system of building in this country is even dented.” In other words, sprawl still reigns, and so do the sundry forms of architectural dysfunction afflicting the nation’s public realm. The New Urbanists have changed the conversation, but they haven’t changed the world. At least, not yet.
.....
Modernist construction... is typically a matter of reduced up-front construction costs and elevated maintenance costs. (It’s pretty much the same story in the subdivisions, where construction of ordinary tract houses and McMansions alike has become increasingly shoddy.) New Urbanists ... are entirely correct to speak of the ... solidly crafted, and enduring classical architecture as “frugal.” Truly frugal and indeed “sustainable” architecture involves making buildings that people will love for many years to come.

If the New Urbanists are to fulfill their movement’s vast potential as a force for cultural renewal, though, they must do a better job of addressing the public.

...(NUrbanists are) indifferent to the ways in which sprawl is deeply rooted in the American experience, especially the postwar experience of fabulous material progress. The supercilious attitude ....toward the American way of life—which sprawl has epitomized for some time, like it or not—is easily taken for upper-middle-class snobbery. This simply reinforces the New Urbanists’ status as a yuppie cult.
....
...New Urbanists need to focus on a vision that supports the resurgence of an architectural culture—which is precisely what we haven’t got now. Sprawl, generally speaking, is a utilitarian phenomenon with minimal artistic value. It does not involve vision. Its practical advantages, as embraced by millions of Americans, are real, but from a design standpoint it represents unculture...

...As for sprawl, you don’t have to be losing sleep over rising sea levels to regard it as a deeply problematic habitat, or even an ecologically wasteful and objectionable one.

.... Our system... takes no account of the developer of vision who looks beyond the investment cycle to build on the best of our civic-art heritage...

...New Urbanism should not operate as a top-down phenomenon, but as a locally oriented movement that builds from the bottom up. Even if it became politically feasible, attempts to mainstream New Urbanism by bureaucratic diktat...would simply turn New Urbanism into mass-market kitsch...

... building a community cannot be a libertarian exercise... you would need a founder—a leader ... Such a leader would have the guts to scorn the bureaucratic minutiae of “process” politics and stake his authority and prestige on a principled judgment: “This is how we should build here.” Grounded in vision and culture, such leadership could build a community for future generations informed by the noble achievements of the past. ...

The New Urbanists... need to... focus on the formidable task of cultivating political leaders across the ideological spectrum who have the gumption to redeem the nation’s urban landscape—one community at a time.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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