Suburban Nation - Andres Duany [74]
REASONS NOT TO, AND REASONS TO DO SO ANYWAY
About once a week we receive a call from someone who has read about one of the new towns we’ve designed, and is prepared to move almost anywhere to experience the sense of community described. Our first response is to ask the caller to consider one of the older towns that has served as our inspiration. Frankly, as residents of traditional communities ourselves, we wonder why someone would want to live in a brand-new development rather than a neighborhood that has matured over generations of use. Why live in Seaside instead of Key West, or Kentlands instead of Georgetown? The short answer to this question has to do with people’s desire for new houses without surprises, and the lower prices available in communities that have yet to experience the appreciation that beautiful old neighborhoods have already undergone. Whatever the reason, it is troubling that people are happily moving into new communities when there are still many old communities that could benefit from new arrivals.
New towns are not always the answer. The appropriateness of a greenfield development depends on the particular characteristics of the surrounding region. Certain facts must be accepted as given. If a region is not growing statistically—in population or wealth—it should not be growing geographically. The result of such unwarranted dispersal is the draining of the inner city and the wasteful distribution of new infrastructure. Even in regions that are growing, the objectives of economic efficiency and social justice suggest that growth be focused in areas that are already at least partially developed.
Why create new places at all when existing places are underutilized? It must be clearly stated that many social and environmental ills would best be solved, at least temporarily, by a moratorium on greenfield development. There is a ready supply of vacant land available for infill projects, both in the inner city and in existing suburbs. But, as already described, forces conspire to make exurban investment more attractive to developers than infill work. For the time being, as we fight these incentives for suburban growth, we must admit that it is still occurring, and in the worst possible form: automobile-based sprawl.
Conscientious designers are faced with a difficult choice: to allow sprawl to continue without intervention, or to reshape new growth into the most benevolent form possible. Given those options, a growing number of designers feel compelled to choose the ambiguous risk of engagement over the easy moral purity of inaction. Distancing oneself from the problem may be easier, but it implies that nothing good can come from the current circumstances. Unless unjustified greenfield development is stopped—an unlikely prospect ct—designers should endeavor to ensure that what gets built on the urban fringe is as environmentally sound, economically efficient, and socially just as possible.cu
The pages that follow outline the design principles that underlie our practice, principles that should inform any conscientious attempt at healthy suburban growth. These principles are also presented in simplified form in the Traditional Neighborhood Development Checklist provided in Appendix A.
REGIONAL CONSIDERATIONS
The most important design criteria of any new village or town—and the least often satisfied—are regional. Currently, most development occurs not according to geographical logic but according to the random disposition of resources: the first parcels to be developed are often those whose owners have the financing, rather than the ones that are the best located or the least environmentally sensitive. This is a good argument for regional planning authorities, if Europe is any evidence. There, the government typically designates and executes the land development, while private developers focus