The Washington
Independent -
February 25, 2008
Elitism of Urban Planning
By Mary Kane
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Atlantic’s recent story "The Next Slum" is the kind of piece that gets
people talking, as stories about urban life and the growth of suburbs and
exurbs tend to do. We just weighed in on the subject ourselves last week.
But what I found most interesting – and
disturbing – about the Atlantic piece was what it left out.
Author Christopher Leinberger, a visiting
fellow at the Brookings Institute and an urban planning professor, predicts
the decline of the exurbs: Today’s McMansions turning into tomorrow’s
tenements. Cities and urban-style living, in the meantime, will become more
desirable as people choose communities where they can walk and socialize
with their neighbors. As proof, the article cites the popularity of suburban
towns that have walkable urban centers, featuring a mix of residential and
commercial development.
I’ve seen those places: Seaside in Florida,
or Kentlands, in Gaithersburg, Md. And they are nice, with homes built close
to each other, featuring front porches and town squares, a throwback to
small towns, a contrast to the isolation of the cul-de-sacs. This whole
movement started back in the 1980s and was popularized by Miami architects
Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. It came to be known as New
Urbanism and there are developments like it around the county, examples of
Leinberger’s thesis.
But what he fails to point out is this: New
Urbanism’s greatest failure has been its inability to provide for
mixed-income housing. That was the idea at the start – all this
neighborliness and high-density development was supposed to include people
of all income levels. That was the dream. But the developments proved to be
so popular, and so expensive, that the moderate income houses never did get
built on any substantial scale. The only mixed-income living at Kentlands
turned out to be the Au pair suites above the garages.
Leinberger also is a real-estate developer.
That should tell you something about his view. It’s nice to talk about
desirable communities and walkable urban centers. But the biggest dilemma
for urban planners and developers is not building these traditional-style
towns. It’s giving everyone a piece of the dream.
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