New Urbanism

I've recently witnessed an increase in the discussion of New Urbanism in various corners of my internet wanderings.  There's a robust thread in the discussion forum at Ars Technica, some commentary today at The Consumerist, and it's usually a weekly topic for blogger Atrios.  I suspect it's not much longer before it gets attention at other policy-minded sites like FiveThirtyEight (Nate Silver's already done some quantitative real estate analysis work for New York Magazine).

New Urbanism is roughly the philosophy of urban planning focused on walkable urban centers with nearby walkable and variegated housing options.  It's like the anti-Long-Island, which is all 6-lane road lined with cryptically connected strip malls.  It originally formed as an aesthetic and economic response to suburban sprawl.  Sprawl has a habit of encouraging McMansion style housing as a uniform rule, and not supporting a healthy mix of local commercial industry (strip malls primarily being a retail haven), resulting in inflated housing costs and inadequate employment diversity on a local basis.  Naples, Florida is the worst example I can think of.  It's literally a grid of 4-6 lane highways with segregated housing developments that don't connect to anything, contain no commercial space, and have only one entry/exit point that's perpetually shrouded in traffic.  If you want to live in Naples, you need a car for basic survival.  Grandma isn't going to make it walking across Radio Rd and down two miles in the ditch to the Publix for her meds.  The majority of eastern West Virginia is also like this, where cheap land and the housing bubble resulting in the rapid spawning of McMansion developments that often didn't have a single store or strip club within ten miles, nevermind a sidewalk.

New Urbanism instead encourages a strong diversity of housing options (McMansions, smaller single homes, townhouses, apartment towers) with a diversity of industry (some retail mixed in with residential areas, more corporate and industrial options in urban centers), all mingled together in walkable neighborhoods, sometimes with easy mass transit options.  The most urban example would be like non-midtown sectors of Manhattan (upper-east side?  Soho?) where ground floor is mostly retail, but housing is above it, there's a ton of non-retail business in the area, and your two feet and the subway eliminate the need for a car.  This obviously happened before the movement began, but it's kind of the end-goal of urban New Urbanism.  A more suburban reclamation example might be North Bethesda/White Flint/Rockville Maryland, which has eliminated its cul-de-sacs and worked harder at developing its urban centers near the DC Metro line.

New Urbanism has long been an interest to more public-policy minded economists (like Atrios) who understood that the commuter society America has become isn't really economically optimal.  Transportation remains a serious barrier to business in this country, and is one of the primary reasons internet commerce w/ shipping options is taking off here.  But suburban sprawl also creates housing and labor mobility issues, where local wages often cannot support local housing costs.  Highways and automobile maintenance costs are a major money sink.  Traffic has a negative influence on regional productivity.  It's all just grossly inefficient and that should rub most economists the wrong way.

However, I think this recent resurgence of New Urbanism chat in surprising places has a different origin.  I don't think it's about urban planning and economics.  I think it's actually just about gasoline.  The wars in the middle east, the BP disaster, last summer's (and this summer's) high gas price panic, a depression and unemployment (and its impact on maintaining your car and filling the gas tank), greenhouse gases and global warming...I think there's a developing collective but perhaps subconscious panic about the long-term security and affordability of fossil fuels.  The renewed focus on walkability and mass transit and local employment is about people trying to find a way to get rid of their cars.  It's now a micro- concern, not macro-.  About personal bank accounts instead of aggregate economic indicators.  When people like Andrew Sullivan start talking about walkable neighborhoods, it's because they're envisioning themselves within it.  I think this is a remarkable shift for the New Urbanism movement, which traditionally has been very academic and driven by architects and economists and only the most dedicated local government policy wonks.

I should note that while there's a certain Green aspect to New Urbanism, Green isn't really the driving force.  Green is more about you moving to existing urban areas, ditching your car, etc.  NU is more about revitalizing existing suburban sprawl and bringing the Green to you.  Small but significant difference.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing if this new personalized interest in urban planning survives the pending economic upturn and Iraq/Afghanistan withdrawal in the next 2-3 years, to see if it's just a collective freakout over personal finances and foreign relations w/r/t oil, or if it's a genuine philosophical public shift away from bubble-era sprawl strategies.