So planning is needed, but not the totalitarian kind of either the Disney traditionalists or the New Deal modernists. We need planning that makes more room, not less, for people to do their thing in their many and varied ways. Planning that is based on the way people are in the real world, not on what officials and bureaucrats think they should be like. None of this implies that suburbs are a bad thing, or that everybody has to live in a big city. It is simply a matter of acknowledging that what worked well in 1957 doesn t necessarily work well in 2001, and that we need to look at new ways of getting what we want while avoiding some of the unintended consequences of past ways of doing things.
Urban design can certainly facilitate community building, but it can t dictate it.
I couldn t agree more. Planners, politicians, developers, and just plain folks all need to keep that philosophy in mind. Thank you for Sam Staley s very interesting article on suburbs past and present. Yet I think that he has missed the appeal of New Urbanism to those of us who are neither Marxist nor especially interested in community life. What withers in suburbia is quality of life.