I would like to pose a few questions:

 

1. Where in the century-long literature of urbanism is there an argument for continuous urban fabric at the scale of the entire city? I have studied historic and recent texts (for The New Civic Art) and I can find a few; but there are many more proposals for a discontinuous city of multiple centers--and their authors are illustrious (Krier and Saarinen among others). Indeed the general thrust is about BREAKING UP the conurbations into discrete communities separated by green space. This technique is further supported by the recent emergence of environmental corridors.

 

2. Where are the statistics that show that we can accommodate the majority of the incoming American population within urban boundaries? There will be 90 million new Americans in the next thirty years. They will need 40 million new dwellings. Infill or densification will not accommodate them--even assuming that we could reverse our culture of “public” participation to one that would accept it. And what of the single-family house of our deepest culture and history? It is overwhelmingly desired by the market and embedded into property rights laws in many states. The New Urbanism has not had a problem with the single family house until it was inadvertently proscribed by TOD and UGB density standards.

 

3. Should we propose urbanized areas that are continuous and contiguous, even if the result would be distancing ourselves from nature? Should not proximity to an urban center be balanced with proximity to open space? Why must I drive 20 miles in Miami (a contiguous city) to get to nature? Why can we not have the choice of living in cities of great extent as well as towns, villages, hamlets and also rural estates? Why not all of them, so long as they are WELL DESIGNED? Is that not the proposition of the New Urbanism: to restore urbanism--all of urbanism--to its point of excellence? It is obvious that we used to do all of them well. Let us salvage rather than throw out.

 

4. Where in the history of any people, are new settlements banned? Opposing greenfield growth (providing of course that it is compact, walkable and diverse) betrays a lack of confidence that we can create great communities again. It is for others to lack confidence, but not the New Urbanists (I trust that we do not have to rehearse the reasons why we should be confident). Let us not be confused:  Regardless of where it is located, what we are proposing is NOT sprawl. We are proposing compact, diverse, walkable communities (hence the primacy of urban structure) which can be retrofitted to transit (hence the all-important pedestrian shed), and which can evolve successionally.

 

5. Given the preservation of environmentally and agriculturally JUSTIFIED open space, is it not the urban structure rather than the ipso facto preservation of open space (which we do not lack) that is more important? Is it the cost of transportation that is the dominant determinant? Are the costs of extended transportation and services really so great? The services must be there in any case, the cars owned anyway, the utilities built anyway. Are the INCREMENTAL costs of extending them all that much? And is traffic congestion not to be mitigated primarily by the distribution to the permeable network of the roads that are going to be built anyway to provide access to lots? What are the INCREMENTAL costs in the context of basic costs? Is the whole issue of edges (as opposed to urban structure) not really one of aesthetic preference? If it is, that is OK…but we demand honest disclosure.

 

6. Is it not the case that developers will continue to develop greenfield sites wherever there is zoning in place or zoning that will inevitably be granted (as it is in most states)? Even in places that hold the edge, is this not just a temporary condition until prices rise? Are there any politics in this country that will resist that (see Loudon County, Va.)? Is there any plan--including Portland's--that does not acknowledge that? If the New Urbanists withdraw from action on greenfield development WHEREVER IT TAKES PLACE, we will have withdrawn the only alternate model, the only effective criticism that these developers now confront! What is to be gained by pretending that greenfield development will disappear if we decide that we will not participate? Is it that we will earn the high regard of romantic academics and policy persons? If it is otherwise, we would like to know.

 

7. Are we allowing our discourse to be defined in response to a political slogan? Instead of making the necessarily complex case for urban structure, must we comply with a simplistic fantasy of regional structure? By granting it standing (beyond justified environmental preservation) are we not establishing a standard by which we will inevitably FAIL? Even among the most vocal CNU proponents of urban boundaries, the majority of the work is on greenfields and consists of single-family houses. To craft an amendment to the Charter requires strategic thinking of the highest order lest we allow other to define rules such that we must fail.

 

Amendment proposal:  We acknowledge that most of the projected growth of population cannot be accommodated in infill sites, that contiguous urbanism is not always the best pattern of growth, and that the American political circumstance protects and projects growth in open areas. We propose that withdrawing the techniques of the New Urbanism from development, wherever it occurs, will result in a lowering the quality of life, and in greater environmental impact than in its absence. We affirm that the techniques of the New Urbanism are applicable everywhere.