Drawing and urban design find a home in planning schools

When urban planning programs were formed in universities in the 1940s and 1950s, they originally taught students to draw, says Ellen Dunham-Jones, director of architecture at Georgia Tech and a student of the history of urbanism in academia. But that quickly changed. “Urban renewal programs in the 1950s scared everyone off of physical design,” she says. “Planning became dominated by policy.” Harvard’s planning program moved out of the school of design to the Kennedy School of Government, and Princeton’s moved to the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy. Now the pendulum is swinging in the other direction. New Urbanism, with its emphasis on urban design and its impact on planning practice, is creating a demand for the teaching of design skills at many of the nation’s 70 accredited urban and regional planning schools. That’s not to say that policy and statistics are deemed less important; rather that planners need to be sophisticated in urban design as well. “It is something that I have really seen the students clamoring for,” says Emily Talen, an associate professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “That has forced me to get my drawing skills — which I never had — in order.” Talen and Cliff Ellis, an associate professor of urban planning at the University of Kansas, are two of the few planning academics in the US who call themselves new urbanists. Ellis teaches new urban principles and practice in a site planning class and a land use class that are well attended but not required. “I make my students draw but am much more forgiving in terms of the quality of the graphics than they are in the architectural studios,” he says. Nevertheless, Ellis believes students “need to be sophisticated and skilled in evaluating the quality of urban design,” he says. “In the 1990s, new urban projects were exotic. Now, in almost every community, somebody will try something that is called New Urbanism. Planners need to know whether it is real, or hybrid, or entirely fake.” on the wrong foot Ellis believes that New Urbanism “got off on the wrong foot” among planning academics because it is a movement founded by mostly nonacademic architects. Some professors were fearful that it was a fad; that turned out not to be the case. In addition, articles on the New Urbanism by PhDs in refereed journals are published more frequently than in the past, he says. “In the 1990s, it was considered an oddity — now it is a popular topic at conferences. It has moved to the center of debate,” he says. There is less hostility toward New Urbanism in planning departments than in schools of design, Ellis and other believe. “Professors will choose bits and pieces of it, but they don’t want to put New Urbanism on the label or join CNU,” he says. Still, there remains significant skepticism toward New Urbanism principles and practice at most planning schools. New Urbanism has made far fewer inroads among planning academics than professional planners. The American Planning Association has a New Urbanism division, for example, and its conference panels are overflowing with new urbanists. Peter Katz, author of The New Urbanism and professor in practice at Virginia Tech’s school of urban affairs and planning, believes tenure — which ensures that those who work their way through the academic system have a permanent job — is a factor in the slow acceptance of New Urbanism ideas among faculty. “The last generation of planning thinking holds sway in academe — because of tenure,” he says. Virginia Tech/Alexandria’s program, formed only a few years ago, is the only one that New Urban News found that emphasizes smart growth, form-based codes, and New Urbanism on its home page. It has positioned itself as the urban planning program that specializes in smart growth and New Urbanism, says program director Arthur C. Nelson. This may be a factor in its growth — it had 9 students in 2002, and now has 80. That compares with 50 urban planning students at Virginia Tech’s main campus. “There’s a crying need for this — it’s a big overlooked area by most planning and architecture programs,” he says. “Not many schools focus on New Urbanism — that’s a huge mistake because it is where the future is.” Virginia Tech/Alexandria has also launched The Academy of the New Urbanism, which sponsors seminars for ongoing education of midcareer professionals. Although New Urbanism may not be in the core curricula of many schools, a number of top university programs have faculty that are receptive to new urbanist ideas. The Universities of Michigan and California/Berkeley, discussed in detail in the main article in this issue, are rated highly by new urbanists partly because of their planning programs. The University of Pennsylvania, where Jonathan Barnett teaches, also falls into that category. New urbanists also have respect for the planning program at the University of Washington, which has a strong urban design emphasis. Beyond that, students interested in New Urbanism can connect with professors like Talen and Ellis, or look for urban planning schools that offer specialties in urban design. Florida Atlantic University and the University of Illinois have planning programs with some faculty support for New Urbanism; other schools with CNU members include Clemson University, University of Nebraska/Lincoln, University of Texas/Austin, and Southwest Missouri State University. R.S.