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NEW_URBAN_HERESY

                                           October 30, 2001
The obvious question
(to me): will "new
urbanism" have it's
own unintended
consequences?

   I have confidence
   that the modern world
   is quite capable of
   building strictly         Like: "Okay, now we've
   according to New          got cheap condos with               (Mar 24, 2014)
   Urbanist doctrine,        front porches tacked on,       And since I wrote
   and finding ways to       and our garages are            this, I've seen new
   screw everything up.      hidden down the alleys.        places that match
                             When do our lives start        this description
                             getting better?"               *exactly* down in
                                                            Sunnyvale...

      I may call myself a New Urbanist
      at present, but at heart I'm
      essentially a Contrarian, and I
      like to entertain myself by
      constructing New Urban Heresies.



For example, conventional wisdom has
it that the LA experience with
highway building was not a fluke.

They thought they could build more
road than anyone needed, but it
turned out that having that much road
encouraged people to use it, and
they ended up with more cars than
anyone would have envisioned.

It is now regarded as a naive
thought that if the roads are
crowded it means you need to
build more: no matter how much
you build, they'll always want
more.

   I sometimes wonder if
   that's strictly true.
   Could we stay ahead of
   demand with a massive,
   continual road
   building program?

     Run out of land to                 "Oh my god, remember the
     appropriate?                       880 collapse in the '89
     Then use the airspace.             quake?"  Yeah, I do.
     Double-deck the                    I remember that it was
     highways.                          known to be substandard
     Triple-deck them.                  before the quake.

        It would be
        expensive.

        It would probably
        result in a world                           Variation:
        no one would be                             Auction off the airspace
        happy with...                               over the highway to
                                                    a private firm. Let them
        But maybe                                   build a toll road that
        it's not                                    competes with the crowded
        strictly                                    public one.  The rich
        impossible.                                 and the desperate would
                                                    then have another option.

Another one:
New Urbanism puts                                        (I still play
emphasis on physical                                     libertarian on
proximity as the basis                                   alternate
of community, and                                        Tuesdays.)
obsesses a lot about
transit systems.

   What if all of that stuff
   turns out to be irrelevant
   in the near future?

   Telecommuting.
   On-line community.
   Cell phones.


               Is it possible that the
               future will bring a utopia
               more like "The Naked Sun"            While we're
               than "The Caves of Steel"?           envisioning
                                                    technical fixes,
                                                    we could throw
                                                    in methods of
                                                    fooling your body
                                                    into thinking
                                                    it's had exercise.

                                                    "Steroids" that work.

                                                               (Steroids
                                                               not on
                                                               steroids?)


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