Thoughts amid the turmoil

Everyone is writing about sprawl and the New Urbanism these days. Time magazine recently described the “The Brawl Over Sprawl” in an article reporting on a host of initiatives on local, state, and national levels to curb suburban development. Significant articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, and The New Republic, among other publications. The Heritage and Reason foundations, conservative “think tanks,” have recently defended sprawl and attacked smart growth advocates and new urbanists. This debate is good. America is overdue for a national discussion on sprawl and the physical form of communities. But some issues need to be addressed. Beware of statistics. The New Republic article, for example, tried to poke a hole in the anti-sprawl argument by making the startling statement that American metropolitan regions have become more densely populated since 1950. This is 180 degrees wrong. The statement was based on population growth in metropolitan regions, which are determined by county boundaries. By that measure, the Albuquerque metro region has not grown in size since 1950, while its population rose from 70,000 to more than 400,000. The reality is that formerly rural land around the city has been developed. In fact, in 157 metropolitan areas where numbers are available, developed land grew by 255 percent between 1950 and 1990 while the population grew by only 88 percent, or one-third the rate of land growth, according to regionalism expert David Rusk. New Urbanism bugaboo Some of the reports in favor of sprawl portray the New Urbanism as a malevolent force undermining the American way of life. “If you live in a metropolitan area, your city planning bureau is probably infested with New Urbanists,” warned the Reason Foundation. These critics have little understanding of new urbanist principles, or choose to misinterpret them. Anyone who is in favor of density, urban growth boundaries, or mass transit is labeled a “new urbanist,” even though a region can have any or all of those things without creating much New Urbanism. The heart of the New Urbanism lies in the physical design of its neighborhoods, which differ from sprawl in most respects. Seeing political fault lines appear is also disturbing. The New Urbanism has a history of crossing political boundaries, appealing to conservatives and liberals alike who believe in the value of a human-scale public realm. The trend can and should remain bipartisan, despite misinformed reports by “think tanks.” Public space is dead In a conference at Harvard in March, celebrated Dutch architect and urban designer Rem Koolhaas declared, in Nietzschian fashion, that “public space is dead.” Koolhaas explains that the physical public realm has been replaced by “forms of public space invisible to the eye,” producing what he calls a “universal city that exists wherever we are in the world.” In other words, someone can now experience urbanism on a mountaintop, on a golf course, or Times Square — wherever. That is bunk. Computers, televisions, cell phones, and cars haven’t replaced the need for meaningful and attractive physical public spaces. Walkable streets, plazas, and town centers — not to mention physical “third places” such as cafes, corner stores and taverns — will always be important. That’s why tourists flock to walkable places as diverse as Nantucket, Manhattan, and Seaside. The bottom line is that an architect who believes that public space is dead is likely to design dead public spaces.