Dense Thinkers

"New Urbanism," the latest fad in urban planning, promises less traffic, better air, and lower taxes. Here's what it really delivers.

Randal O'Toole from the January 1999 issue

(Page 5 of 5)

Light rail does nothing to reduce congestion; in fact, because most transit systems sacrifice more-popular bus routes once they introduce less-popular trains, it typically increases congestion. But that is not the construction industry's concern. So long as New Urban interests can channel money toward rail, the construction industry will be only too happy to finance the political campaigns of New Urbanist city officials and any ballot measures that might be required to obtain local rail funding.

The Metro Dilemma

Given the strength of the congestion coalition, it's no surprise that the New Urbanism has gotten as far as it has. While the movement has visible critics--including Joel Garreau, Peter Gordon of the University of Southern California, and John Charles of the Portland-based Cascade Policy Institute--sometimes it seems as if it is an unstoppable civic juggernaut. Beyond underscoring its inconsistencies and misrepresentations, one way of challenging the New Urbanism is to recognize its place in the urban planning tradition.

Far from being the "scientific" and "rigorous" school of thought its proponents claim, the New Urbanism is best understood as simply the latest attempt by planners to pass narrow, essentially moral judgments on American cities. Beginning with the "City Beautiful" movement in the late 19th century, planners believed that good design would lead to a "new urban man" who would be a morally upright member of the community. Given the proper architectural circumstances, planners theorized, urban residents would work hard and not turn to crime; social ills such as drunkenness would disappear.

Early land-use planners believed that the crowded, dirty cities where houses were mingled with factories and commercial uses should be replaced by low-density residential areas separated from other uses. There, workers would be free from easily transmitted diseases and have cleaner air. A few decades later, in the 1920s, early transportation planners hoped that good roads would revitalize downtowns--threatened even then by "sprawl" --by reducing congestion and attracting new investments. But all the freeways did is give residents and employers a quicker escape from the crowded central cities.

New Urbanism has learned well the lesson that roads let people go where they want to go. They've wedded that insight to the early land-use planners' goal of improving people's moral behavior. The immoral behavior New Urbanists want to end now is driving, which they see as wasteful, noxious, and anti-social. Interestingly, to stop people from driving, they are trying to turn entire urban areas into the crowded, mixed-use cities that 19th-century planners found so degrading. "The politics of stasis," says interstate highway historian Mark Rose, "has displaced the politics of growth." What hasn't changed is the belief that people cannot or should not be left to their own devices when it comes to deciding where and how to live their lives.

If the New Urbanists put the actual quality of life of urban residents ahead of their theories about quality of life, they would chart a vastly different course. The best prescription for the central cities is to let them depopulate as people move out to the suburbs. As their densities fall, they will become more attractive places to live. This has happened in Cleveland, the former national joke which has become one of the more livable cities in the Midwest. But such a policy bruises the egos of the city officials who want to maintain political hegemony over the suburbs; it also fails to satisfy the demands of the rest of the congestion coalition.

So the New Urbanists turn instead to regional planning, growth boundaries, suburban "densification," congestion-inducing road policies, and light-rail transit. This is a prescription for destroying not only the central cities but the suburbs as well. As baby boomers retire and telecommuters increase, fewer and fewer people will need to live in urban areas. If the New Urbanists succeed in making the suburbs as unlivable as many central cities already are, people living in cities and suburbs are likely to become "exurbanites," moving out to rural areas. Exurbanization will be sprawl with a vengeance, as people forbidden to live on quarter-acre suburban lots happily move to five-to-40-acre rural lots.

A recent survey of Portland residents should give the New Urbanists pause, even as it apparently confirms their agenda. The poll found that most Portlanders do in fact support Metro's plan. But then the poll asked where people would live if they had a choice: the city, the suburbs, or rural areas. The same majority said "rural areas." That response might seem odd, but it's in keeping with the New Urbanism, which produces in abundance everything its adherents claim to oppose: congestion, pollution, unaffordable housing, and higher taxes.