Suburban Nation - Andres Duany [88]
The following policy proposals demand a commitment to community at every level of government. The promotion of community may seem to be an obvious role for the public sector, especially at the local level; some would suggest that it is the public sector’s primary responsibility. Yet it can become a sticky constitutional issue when brought face-to-face with the American ideology of rugged individualism. This is particularly true when it comes to property rights, people’s ability to do whatever they want with their land.
In this regard, we must turn to the first question of political philosophy: Is it the role of government to promote individual rights while defending the common good, or to promote the common good while defending individual rights? To those of us who are concerned with creating and maintaining community, it seems obvious that our government has too long favored the former objective, and that it is time for a correction. Real estate developers, whom Americans entrust to build their communities, adhere to regulations set by government policy. If the public sector does not actively involve itself, with vision and power, private action cannot be anything but self-interested and chaotic.
This state of affairs may seem inevitable, but the first quarter of the twentieth century provides evidence of an alternative. The City Beautiful movement was a period of urban rebuilding and new-town construction in which civic pride, beauty, and community were a consensus agenda, promoted to an optimistic populace by wise leaders at both the local and federal levels. Of course, some things have changed since the enlightened building of that progressive era—the development of new transportation and communication technologies, enormous social flux, and the globalization of markets—but our governments would do well to acknowledge that these changes have only intensified the need for properly designed communities.
This is not merely an issue of aesthetics. Building strong neighborhoods and cities is a matter of social, economic, and environmental health that determines our quality of life and thereby America’s ability to compete in the global marketplace. When we visit countries that—in marked contrast to the United States—actually develop and maintain their cities with an eye to past successes and failures, we can’t help but conclude that the United States will soon find itself at a competitive disadvantage to Europe. We watch in frustration as our governments refuse to play an active role in the construction of community, typically leaving that task to the ad hoc creators of tangible failures.dl
For the growing number of public servants who share our frustration and hope to make a difference, we offer the following policy proposals. As should become clear, these proposals are not about increasing the size of government but about reforming its influence on the built environment. They are structured from the bottom up, from the local to federal level.
MUNICIPAL AND COUNTY GOVERNMENT
Put community design back on the agenda. Elected leaders who want to leave behind a place worth caring about must make design a part of their public agenda. People have trouble recognizing the profound effect that our physical surroundings have on daily life. When the topic of physical planning does surface, it is usually in the form of bitter citizen outcry over something gone wrong or about to go wrong, almost always perceived to be perpetrated from above. Sprawl is a disease so chronic that people have grown accustomed to living with it, and they attack only the symptoms rather than the underlying condition.
That condition can be traced back to rules and regulations that are instituted with little understanding of their likely physical outcome. Words and numbers are printed on paper and enforced without any guidance from drawings or other visual models. No wonder the result is so often an unpleasant surprise. Drawings, unlike words and numbers, are something