“As someone who has studied New Urbanism, i am rather confused as to the content in your link. Anti-socialist hyperbole aside, the author seems to link New Urbanist studies to a Corbusian take on urban design, when it would probably be more accurate to say that New Urbanist thought, at least in the United States, has substantially more to do with the works of Christopher Alexander and Leon Krier . . .”

Oh, sure. Utopian visions, and the theories detailing how to achieve those visions, come and go. At the moment Corbusier is “out” and Alexander in “in.” What they all share, however, is a fundamental misconception regarding the determinants of observable patterns of human settlement, and a certain conceit. The misconception is that there is a set of timeless and static principles which yield optimum patterns. But there isn’t; indeed the optimum pattern is always state-dependent: it is the pattern generated by the particular values of the variables operating at the moment. Since those variables and their values are unpredictable, every algorithmic approach is bound to yield non-optimum solutions.

The patterns that planners, including New Urbanists, deem optimal are patterns that emerged under a given set of informational, economic and technological constraints. Whenever any of those constraints change, the patterns are no longer optimum.

The conceit, of course, is the planner’s conviction that they, having been schooled in the current Utopian dogmas, are qualified and entitled to impose the patterns they favor on communities by force.

“Also, please remind me why a celebration of people and urban space has anything to do with New Urbanism and/or socialism.”

Well, Jon, because “liberating” a parking space is the symbolic banishment of the automobile from the urban scene. And the automobile is the Great Destroyer of the archaic patterns New Urbanists idolize.

As someone who has studied New Urbanism, i am rather confused as to the content in your link. Anti-socialist hyperbole aside, the author seems to link New Urbanist studies to a Corbusian take on urban design, when it would probably be more accurate to say that New Urbanist thought, at least in the United States, has substantially more to do with the works of Christopher Alexander and Leon Krier, than it does a Swiss architect who was looking at how to infill European cities that were bombed to near total destruction. Also, i would point to the Garden City movement of the turn of the century more so than to the planning policies of Eastern Bloc nations during the Cold War.

If anything, New Urbanism is seen as an antithesis of Corbuian Modernism in both design and planning.

Also, please remind me why a celebration of people and urban space has anything to do with New Urbanism and/or socialism.

This is New Urbanism:

Congress for New Urbanism – http://www.cnu.org/

Pattern Language (works of Christopher Alexander)-
http://www.patternlanguage.com/

Leon Krier – http://www.patternlanguage.com/

I’d think there are plenty of other ways to bring awareness to community. Division and Sprague are business streets much the same as Amsterdam is here in NYC. It’s where traffic and businesses go to do…….well…business. Not too pretty anywhere but it’s where business gets done. Riverside, Main, Monroe, Courthouse District etc in Spokane qualify as well.

I suppose if a group of people want pretty and quiet, they could move to a smaller city with trees and roses everywhere. I’d prefer that but the feel of a real city would be gone. How does one capture both? Commuter roads….!!! We need em! Ask Kitty! Plenty of those might be used to let a citizen live out a bit and still function in a city that does business. It’s an idea as American as apple pie. Some of my remarks are facetious of course..but some aren’t.

Hopefully this awareness leads people to speak up in favor of and design places where the community can interact. Places like community centers, parks, walkable streets etc. Places that make Brownes Addition, Downtown, and the South Hill nice places to walk and or drive through. The counter examples are the areas of Spokane like Division and Sprague that I’m usually embarrassed to show to out of town relatives.

Automobiles are antisocial, you see. They allow people to go where they wish to go, when they wish to go there. They also permit them to choose the routes they will travel and their traveling companions, and to live where they wish to live. And that cannot be permitted, because history has shown that if they are allowed such freedoms many of them will abandon the huddled tenements of the city and choose less dense, more private, more spacious accomodations than government planners think they need. Such freedoms undermine the planners’ Utopias and the government’s control over their lives. And no government tolerates that for long.

Promoters of “New Urbanism” (which is really old urbanism, of course) should check out this latest post on Randall O’Toole’s blog:

http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=1872#more-1872

Here is a picture from the east main site –
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goribob/3932275134/

John Waite
makegovwork.org