To the Editors
Architectural Record

Dear Editors:

I wish to correct certain misunderstandings concerning the New Urbanism perpetrated by Blair Kamin in his report on Cabrini Green. He states that the reconstruction of this failed public housing project is not a New Urbanist proposal because its density is 40 units to the acre (rather than the presumed N.U. Maximum of 20), and because it is not limited to middle class residents.

There is nothing intrinsic about the New Urbanism that tops out the density. Density is controlled by cultural preference for certain housing typologies and by the parking requirement. For example: one of our newly designed neighborhoods (in Plano, TX, with RTKL as the building architects) is 54 units to the acre because the developer is willing to build parking garages within the blocks. The only reason that the housing of Cabrini Green can be such a high density is that the people expected to inhabit it rarely own cars.

New Urbanist projects are not intrinsically costly. They become so only as prices are bid up because they are desirable and rare. For example: years ago we sold our cottage at Seaside for $37,000. The lot alone would now sell for 15 times that amount . New Urbanist principles can be faulted for this only because their excellence makes development elsewhere seem inept.

The rebuilding of Cabrini Green is in fact very much a New Urbanist project, and not just because of superficial similarities. HUD Secretary Cisneros three years ago asked the Congress of the New Urbanism to rewrite the standards to guide their current program, called Hope VI. This was duly done and accepted by the agency. He also asked the CNU to set up training sessions for HUD officials so that they would be able to judge applications according to these new standards. As a result, dozens of HUD projects are explicitly New Urbanist.

Try as you might, it is difficult to avoid the New Urbanism. It is the reference point of sensible social and environmental planning. Only be promulgating misinformation can a good urban project be considered outside of the principle of the New Urbanism.

Andres Duany