Readers around the world can find a concise

Readers around the world can find a concise yet comprehensive summary of New Urbanism and its progress simply by clicking a website address at Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism. This up-to-date essay on New Urbanism, just short of 2,900 words, is to a large extent the work of Laurence J. Aurbach in Adelphi, Maryland, who has been writing about New Urbanism for years. Aurbach has also contributed to Wikipedia entries on “Andres Duany,” “Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk,” and “grid plan.” What few readers realize is the diligence with which Aurbach tried to keep the New Urbanism entry accurate. “I monitored the page weekly and sometimes more often for a year and a half,” until last January, Aurbach says. Wikipedia describes itself as a “democratic” source that allows anyone to post information, the theory being that any erroneous or malicious information will soon be detected and deleted, although sometimes mischief goes uncorrected for months. “I removed plenty of inaccurate material, much of it based on the half-baked criticisms and misperceptions you see in some of the major dailies and architecture mags, some based on O’Toole/Cox [Randal O’Toole and Wendell Cox] misinformation,” Aurbach relates. “It’s surprising how many people make authoritative assertions about NU without even knowing facts like the existence of an organization called CNU.”