Duany's Vision of the Future

Rick Hampson, writing for USA Today, on the future of cities according to Andres Duany:

Global warming will be a fait accompli in 30 years, and so these urban Americans will raise their own food, in fields and on rooftops, and build structures to withstand everything from hurricane winds to Formosan termites.

They will walk and ride more and drive less. And they will like it.

Duany sees five trends:

1. Urban retrofit of suburbia


2. Gardener on the roof


3. Government goes hyper local


4. Buildings that look cool and safe


5. Mormon settlers as models

The article includes a few token criticisms of the New Urbanist movement that deserve some mention:

Duany and the New Urbanists have their critics. Demographer Joel Kotkin of Southern California’s Chapman University argues that the convenience of the car and the suburb ensures their continued dominance over mass transit and city centers.

There is ample evidence that a large segment of the population prefers walkable neighborhoods. This convenience argument doesn’t address a whole host of issues. How is traffic and gridlock convenient? How is having to drive everywhere more convenient than having options? New Urbanism doesn’t look to eliminate cars but instead looks to diminish the role of the car in the decision making process. New Urbanism’s basic premise is how do we design for people but accommodate the car as well. Any argument that starts with “people like cars” ignores that basic fact.

And British architecture critic Jonathan Glancey has called New Urbanism “holier-than-thou” in its presumption that planners know best.

I don’t think New Urbanists believe planners know best - maybe that good planners know better than bad planners. Much of the work of New Urbanism seeks to undo the negative consequences of decades of bad planning. Powerful planning is the paradigm we live in so New Urbanists seek to use strong planning as a tool to improve our places. Planning exists. The question is whether it is good planning or bad planning. But New Urbanists also know that great places were created in the absence of planning for thousands of years.