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New Urbanism and Beyond: Designing Cities for the Future
edited by Tigran Haas
Rizzoli, 2008
If there's one thing that architects
and New Urbanists should focus on, it is remedying the rift
between architects and New Urbanists. Of course, many architects
are New Urbanists, and even many that aren't card-carrying
members agree with the tenets of the Congress
for New Urbanism, but the two tend to criticize each
other, all-too-many times strongly and non-constructively.
Granted that disagreements are inevitable in individuals
and groups, the fact that New Urbanism is the only design
movement making substantial progress on tackling sprawl
and other urban issues today, attempts at working together
towards what appears to be common goals -- namely reducing
sprawl, renewing community, and sustainability -- would
seem to be warranted. This is reinforced by the crisis situation
that the world faces, with a growing urban population that
will someday exceed the carrying capacity of our planet,
and the fact that the main point of contention is aesthetics,
hardly the best reason for architects to abandon the best
opportunity at making positive change via urban design.
Now I should probably come clean,
that I fall on the side of the fence with other architects
critical of New Urbanist ideas and practice. But my take
is not primarily directed at the reactionary aesthetics
of places like Celebration, Florida, but that the town plans,
as executed, don't really alleviate the problems they address,
namely car use. As well, the middle- to upper-class exclusivity
of New Urbanist towns illustrates that concerns of sustainability
don't extend to the social and economic.
Regardless of my stance towards what
I've seen of CNU developments and writings, when I opened
this collection of writings on New Urbanism "and beyond"
I was optimistic that perhaps an attempt was being made
to close the aforementioned rift. Unfortunately editor Tigran
Haas's introduction adopts a strongly defensive tone regarding
criticisms of New Urbanism, a problem made worse by the
fact that the criticisms he addresses are not quoted, cited,
or even mentioned by name, so he is in essence responding
to generalized critiques of the movement. One wonders if
the following essays are as one-sided as this introduction.
While what is clearly missing from the collection are the
actual critiques of New Urbanism by the likes of Michael
Sorkin or Dean MacCannell, the 60-odd essays and their respective
authors convey the depth and variety of the issues surrounding
New Urbanism.
Broken into eleven themed sections
(theories, sprawl, sustainability, digital spaces, social
capital, etc.), it's more accurate to call the collection
a "primer on urban design" -- as the book does
call itself -- and not let the title pepper one's thoughts
with a biased attitude, as Haas's introduction does. Many
of the essays could only be described as fitting marginally
into New Urbanist ideology, regardless of the author's views
on the movement, be they said or not. Ultimately the book
is as valuable a collection of voices on urbanism as the
recent Endless
City. While each has different intentions, the
results -- and parties involved -- have substantial overlap,
something indicative of the trend towards thinking on the
urban and regional scale. What both books show is that practice
is as important as theory, and now is the time for action...and
reconciliation.
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