ethics
05-27-2003, 08:21 PM
The side-effect of the post WWII American love-affair with the automobile and need for space to make the Baby Boom, the suburb has been portrayed as both a part of the American Dream and a part of everything that was wrong about it. Their tendency to expand exponentially, their reliance on cars for transportation, and their exclusionary nature have made the suburbs targets for urban planners (http://www.planning.org/), in particular the buregeoning New Urbanism (http://www.planning.org/newurbanism/index.htm) movement. For many that wonder why someone like me lives in Brooklyn, this is part of the issue. New Urbanism, however, might change all that.
Read on.
New Urbanism advocates communities built on the human-scale, with less reliance on automobile transport and greater emphasis on mass-transit, and with more concentrated development encouraging businesses and offices to be within walking distance of residential areas. Also key are its ideas of Smart Growth (http://www.smartgrowth.org/Default.asp?res=1024),or limiting expansion, so that the area maintains its decidedly anti-auto character.
To encourage their ideas, New Urbanists are taking a new approach: treating suburban sprawl as a public health hazard.
Last year, the Sierra Club (Yes, I know, consider the source but let's debate those issues first and not dismiss them right away) issued an article, Ten Reasons Why Sprawl Is Hazardous to Your Health (http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200203/lol5.asp).And in an April 2003 article (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.longman.html) of the Washington Monthly, Phillip J. Longman writes that the combined ills of the suburbs' automobile-dependency, including car accidents (see my next thread on this), lack of exercise, stress, self-medication, and social-isolation contribute to a collective public health crisis. The problem of lack of exercise alone, he claims, costs taxpayers $76.6 billion a year, not to mention our lives.
The new approach is apparently working, as some suburban communities are beginning to embrace less automobile-dependent planning and zoning laws. Colin Woodward writes for the Christian Science Monitor (ttp://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0522/p16s01-sten.html) that Dunstan Crossing, a new subdivision development in the town of Scarborough, Maine, will incorporate New Urbanism's ideas of higher-density housing, more open space, and perhaps most importantly, a more walkable community. The development bucks the trend throughout state of Maine, whose largest city, Portland, was named the city hit hardest by urban sprawl by the Brookings Institute, and whose rural areas were converted into suburbs, growing at a rate of ten-percent.
Not everyone is happy with the ideas of New Urbanism, or its attempts to link urban planning with public health. The libertarian Reason Public Policy Institute's Chris Fiscelli issued an article, Smart Growth Type's Dumb Rhetoric (http://www.rppi.org/smartgrowthtypes.html) that the emphasis on limiting growth is "social engineering" and that New Urbanists should "stop trying to kill the American Dream."
Most of us aren't foolish enough to believe that a particular community design is the answer to complex pollution or health problems. And we work long and hard so that we can afford to choose how, and where, we want to live. For some of us, that means living it up in Newport Beach. For others, that means life in a planned community in Brea or Irvine. And for a lot of us, it simply means getting away from downtown and having a house with a small yard. It's what we've dreamed of.
Is Fiscelli right? Does the right to live where we damned well please override public health? Or are the New Urbanists correct in stating that we should encourage walkable communities, because it's what we want anyway? IS it what we want?
Personally, I love the health reasons but that would not be the crux of the decision. I love mass transit and I think that this type of a system, vs. the automobile is not only healthier but lessens our dependencies on the Middle Eastern countries and oil in general. I realize many love their cars and highways and I am not advocating losing that, I am, however, thinking about minimizing it for pleasure instead of getting to and from work?
Read on.
New Urbanism advocates communities built on the human-scale, with less reliance on automobile transport and greater emphasis on mass-transit, and with more concentrated development encouraging businesses and offices to be within walking distance of residential areas. Also key are its ideas of Smart Growth (http://www.smartgrowth.org/Default.asp?res=1024),or limiting expansion, so that the area maintains its decidedly anti-auto character.
To encourage their ideas, New Urbanists are taking a new approach: treating suburban sprawl as a public health hazard.
Last year, the Sierra Club (Yes, I know, consider the source but let's debate those issues first and not dismiss them right away) issued an article, Ten Reasons Why Sprawl Is Hazardous to Your Health (http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200203/lol5.asp).And in an April 2003 article (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.longman.html) of the Washington Monthly, Phillip J. Longman writes that the combined ills of the suburbs' automobile-dependency, including car accidents (see my next thread on this), lack of exercise, stress, self-medication, and social-isolation contribute to a collective public health crisis. The problem of lack of exercise alone, he claims, costs taxpayers $76.6 billion a year, not to mention our lives.
The new approach is apparently working, as some suburban communities are beginning to embrace less automobile-dependent planning and zoning laws. Colin Woodward writes for the Christian Science Monitor (ttp://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0522/p16s01-sten.html) that Dunstan Crossing, a new subdivision development in the town of Scarborough, Maine, will incorporate New Urbanism's ideas of higher-density housing, more open space, and perhaps most importantly, a more walkable community. The development bucks the trend throughout state of Maine, whose largest city, Portland, was named the city hit hardest by urban sprawl by the Brookings Institute, and whose rural areas were converted into suburbs, growing at a rate of ten-percent.
Not everyone is happy with the ideas of New Urbanism, or its attempts to link urban planning with public health. The libertarian Reason Public Policy Institute's Chris Fiscelli issued an article, Smart Growth Type's Dumb Rhetoric (http://www.rppi.org/smartgrowthtypes.html) that the emphasis on limiting growth is "social engineering" and that New Urbanists should "stop trying to kill the American Dream."
Most of us aren't foolish enough to believe that a particular community design is the answer to complex pollution or health problems. And we work long and hard so that we can afford to choose how, and where, we want to live. For some of us, that means living it up in Newport Beach. For others, that means life in a planned community in Brea or Irvine. And for a lot of us, it simply means getting away from downtown and having a house with a small yard. It's what we've dreamed of.
Is Fiscelli right? Does the right to live where we damned well please override public health? Or are the New Urbanists correct in stating that we should encourage walkable communities, because it's what we want anyway? IS it what we want?
Personally, I love the health reasons but that would not be the crux of the decision. I love mass transit and I think that this type of a system, vs. the automobile is not only healthier but lessens our dependencies on the Middle Eastern countries and oil in general. I realize many love their cars and highways and I am not advocating losing that, I am, however, thinking about minimizing it for pleasure instead of getting to and from work?