What the People Really Want

A common argument by anti-New Urbanists and Smart Growth opponents is that form-based codes dramatically limit the freedom of property owners. Stylistic cues, height limits, porch requirements and build-to lines are stifling, anti-democratic, and downright dictatorial rules, or so the argument goes.

My parents just bought a home in a cookie-cutter subdivision in Vero Beach, Florida. As in virtually every South Florida gated community and in many neighborhoods throughout the United States, their new home falls under the jurisdiction of a homeowner's association. The avowed "free marketeers" who think that any form of centralized planning is verboten often praise these associations. They are local, responsive, and practically self-limiting, and the stakeholders have far more say in decisions than they would at a city or county level.

So you can imagine my surprise when I opened my parents' homeowners covenants and found the following statement:

The Architectural Review Committee does not seek to restrict individual taste or preferences. In general, its aim is to avoid harsh contrasts in architectural themes and maintain harmony between all residences to preserve and enhance values of the Properties.

In tamden with this succinct statement is a two page list of "architectural standards" that constitute a simplistic form-based code: materials lists, front door type standards, color choices, minimum roof slope, etc. Despite the freedom to do whatever they want in their small corner of the world, these homeowners continue to embrace a restricted architectural palette.

But to me, the true marvel of this code is its source. The vision of a unified yet varied community of homes came not from an architect or planner or from some top-down master plan. It came from the local developer and builder who set up the rules, implemented them in the homes it built, and passed them on to the homeowner's association.

So what's the deal? If categorically non-urban sprawl builders are freely imposing Smart Code-like limitations on themselves, and if homeowner's associations are maintaining and even strengthening these rules, why aren't NU and Smart Growth more universally accepted? To put it another way, why do the histrionics of sprawl supporters trump the tacit support for Smart Growth-like ideals already in place?

Is it a matter of an ad campaign? Connections to news media? Grassroots coalition-building and community awareness events? How do we quash those who rail against creating human environments that everyone already understands and loves?

Great Animation

Go here: http://students.washington.edu/zvs/the-block/

This is a concrete way of showing anyone and everyone what traditional urbanists mean when they talk about how much our cities lost during the 20th Century.

An American Piazza?

The public space of a car-dominated culture.

This friendly car park is at Illinois & State in downtown Chicago, only three blocks from Michigan Avenue and four blocks north of the Loop. Surely an exorbitantly valuable piece of property, even in today's economy. Imagine turning this into some sort of urban plaza with low-rise mixed-use buildings and three levels of parking beneath. If only we cared as much about public space as we did about parking our cars.

Nice Summation

This editorial in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (posted at Streetsblog) expresses in layman's terms why many us of traditional urbanists pine for European cities. If I had to pick one article about urbanism and New Urbanism to give to Joe American, this would probably be it.