At issue: how to make the New Urbanism grow

The movement needs more developers, more research, and strong standards, according to some. The biggest challenge to New Urbanism is how to expand it well beyond its current minor share of the US development market. That’s the conclusion that emerged from a wide-ranging panel and audience discussion of the future of New Urbanism at the conclusion of CNU X June 16 in Miami Beach. New urban development is growing, but not rapidly enough, most agreed. “Two or three years ago I thought we were on the cusp of a steep climb in entry into the marketplace,” said Hank Dittmar, president of the Great American Station Foundation. The number of new urban projects has grown, but it constitutes only roughly 2 to 3 percent of what’s getting built, including infill development. “I think,” he said, “we sort of plateaued in terms of communications and actual projects.” Participants identified institutional obstacles such as zoning codes, parking requirements, and secondary financial markets as key problems to overcome. Current financial tools for buying middle-income housing “mitigate against mixed use,” according to Dittmar. Lenders in the secondary markets, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not attuned to new urban products. On top of that, Dittmar noted, “good New Urbanism means subsidizing the infrastructure,” but if a heavy burden of infrastructure costs is loaded onto the private sector, the projects become too expensive to build. proposed solutions The following solutions were proposed: • Research should be carried out on why lower parking standards are needed, how new urban developments perform financially, and other matters, Dittmar said. • New urbanists should “come up with a code that’s easy for municipalities to adopt” and that incorporates standards that generate high-quality results, said Diane Dorney, editor and publisher of The Town Paper. • “Develop a firm political voice,” urged Pasadena architect and CNU cofounder Stefanos Polyzoides. He noted that when Gov. Gray Davis said he would aid smart growth in California, “he was savaged by conventional sprawl development forces.” • Reach out to potential allies such as historic preservationists. “Ninety-eight percent of historic preservationists think New Urbanism is all about greenfields,” said Chicago consultant and preservationist Carol Wyant. • Network with educational institutions and volunteers to promote the new urbanist message. Student chapters should be organized in architecture schools, one person in the audience recommended. • Develop standards that prevent predominantly conventional development from being pitched as new urban or traditional neighborhood development. In the absence of such standards, Polyzoides warned, the proliferation of “hybrids” such as Otay Ranch in Chula Vista, California, “is beginning to eat us alive.” Many said CNU needs to be put on a more stable financial footing. The organization’s staff has been pared down because of limited funds. Attendance at the Congress in Miami Beach was 1,114, about the same as in New York last year, yet down from 1,400 in Portland, Oregon, in 2000. A number of people remarked that the Congress has become too expensive for students to attend. “We need to see more young people here,” said Bill Lennertz of the National Charrette Institute. Don Chen, director of Smart Growth America, said CNU should conduct a day of lobbying in Washington as part of next June’s CNU Congress in the nation’s capital. The timing appears right, he noted, since the Washington conference will occur in advance of the expiration of the current federal transportation funding legislation. He observed that CNU X attracted a larger number of public officials, but needs to entice more developers. One person suggested rotating developers through the chairmanship. Some said the CNU annual conference needs to become more of a true “congress,” with more debating done by the members. Peter Katz, CNU’s first executive director, said the first Congress, in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1993, “was a clamor. The group either matured or became too polite.” Some also suggested decentralizing CNU, with chapters around the country. Kate Kraft of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said new urbanists will have to demonstrate “flexibility” and engage in “some compromising” as they try to influence society. Katz, however, saw danger in that argument. “Excellence has a power,” he said. “When you see a knockoff, you need to fight it with every bone in your body. You have to hang on to that.”