The November and December issues of Architecture Magazine

The November and December issues of Architecture Magazine contain a lively, two-part debate on the merits of the New Urbanism (NU) by Harvard professor Alex Krieger and noted new urbanist planner Andres Duany. Krieger, a frequent NU critic, acknowledges in a November essay that new urbanist proponents have laudable goals and have won over organizations such as “the Urban Land Institute, and even the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.” However, he criticizes NU for not building enough developments on infill locations, producing densities that are still too low, and creating “carefully edited, rose-colored evocations of small-town urbanism.” He adds that NU may lure more people away from cities at a point when cities are making a comeback. In his December response, Duany rejects Krieger’s criticisms in their entirety, claiming that they are based on false assumptions and arguments. Even when NU developments are located on greenfield sites, Duany says, their form makes these projects substantially different from sprawl. He defends new urbanist efforts in the suburbs, pointing out that to ignore these areas would be unrealistic and futile, because 95 percent of new development is on greenfield sites. He points out that there are plenty of NU inner city projects and refutes the idea that the Congress for the New Urbanism is nostalgic: “the only thing nostalgic about the CNU is the holding of principles and nurturing of the possibility of attaining them.”