OF COURSE, IT'S OBVIOUS ONCE YOU THINK ABOUT: URBAN PLANNERS AREN'T HIP

I have poked fun at the Urban Planeteers, criticized the Cool City boondoggles, griped about Fowler's Folly, and explained how "planning" strips the muscle from a city.  My theme has been that government cannot plan a dynamic city.  All it can do is maintain the necessary order and basic municipal functions that allow individuals to privately manage their own property within the city.

The reason for this is that no central authority can ever accumulate sufficient information to determine what is the best use of all properties at all times.  (F.A. Hayek explained it best in "The Road to Serfdom".)  That's how we end up with hellholes like Cabrini Green where a vibrant neighborhood once stood and the demolition of architecturally grand public buildings to make room for concrete plazas.

Think about it, people.  Do you really believe that the humorless urban planning major sitting next to you in English 101 who was fascinated by zoning ordinances and building codes and now is a staffer in the city's planning department can really make downtown funky with a click of his bureaucratic pen?  Believing that is how $82,000 in taxes get spent on a P.R. campaign telling citizens to keep Grand Rapids a secret.  Yeah, that's hip and cool.

The Opinion Journal has posted an interesting article about the late Jane Jacobs, author of the seminal book on the folly of urban planning "The Death and Life of Great American Cities".  A relevant snippet:

>>[Jacobs] felt it was foolish to focus on how cities look rather than how they function as economic laboratories. "The main responsibility of city planning and design should be to develop--insofar as public policy and action can do so--cities that are congenial places for [a] great range of unofficial plans, ideas and opportunities to flourish," Jacobs wrote.

>>Sadly, many in the Smart Growth and New Urbanism movements cite Jacobs as the inspiration for their efforts to combat so-called "urban sprawl" and make over suburbia with dense, walkable downtowns, mixed-use development, and varied building styles. While Jacobs identified these as organic elements of successful cities, planners have eagerly tried to impose them on cities in formulaic fashion, regardless of their contextual appropriateness and compatibility with the underlying economic order. In short, they've taken Jacobs's observations of what makes cities work and tried to formalize them into an authoritarian recipe for policy intervention.<<

Click here for the entire article.

Comments

[Steve Goulet]

I have to agree, although I think that the goals of new urbanism are noble. Urban planners have a habit of ignoring the importance of density when attempting to create new urbanist settings. Alex Marshall details this issue here: http://www.alexmarshall.org/index.php?pageId=82

Also, I posted on my blog about the Jade Pig developments in Gaslight Village that are aimed at increasing density. EGR may be the ideal setting for new urbanism, and government planning had nothing to do with it. You can't just create new urbanism in a cow pasture from the remnants of a subdivision:
http://www.stevegoulet.com/PermaLink,guid,8e2ec8c0-2adc-4d00-ba09-6410c806e9e3.aspx

[The Executive Director]

Thanks for the links, Steve.

I think your insight into what constitutes a good model of "new urbanism" is better than Marshall's. New urbanist public policies in Portland have made the city too expensive, whereas private initiatives like those in EGR, which succeed only by building upon and enhancing existing urban qualities of a communities.

In both cases, you and Marshall are right that the best new urbanism is redevelopment, not ersatz faux urban subdivisions. However, the elephant in the room is the wretched state of urban school districts. Until they are reformed, suburbs will continue to draw residents looking for good schools for their kids, while new urbanist redevelopment in core cities will remain elitist (e.g., Portland).

Were that reform to happen, I believe that the social dynamics would naturally align with reinvigoration of core city residential neighborhoods with public schools, parks, and commercial strips within walking distance of affordable homes.

Regards, Bill