[jakecopp]

I feel like I'm not really getting this article, though I am super interested in city planning. It feels too vague.

Are they proposing the two most likely scenarios are 1. Everyone going back to running their own farms and 2. Continued urban sprawl?

What is the reason for this reset? Millennials priced out of the housing market?

I'd be very grateful to hear some clarification about this this piece from someone a lot more knowledgeable than I in urban design.

[jmull]

I think it’s a “rally the supporters” type of thing.

CNU — the Congress for the New Urbanism — is a group of people who would like towns, cities, etc. to be designed differently.

So this article suggests the attractive notion that the opportunity to redesign these things is “coming soon”. So far, so good.

But then it takes an odd turn and enumerates two ways NOT to redesign things. That seems to really blunt the force of the message. But perhaps they are having a hard time agreeing on a vision, and this is a baby step toward narrowing down the range of the debate? It’s always easy to assemble a group of people who are dissaisfied by the way things are. But much harder to get them to agree on the way things should be.

Personally, I’m somewhat doubtful of “urbanism” at all. Perhaps wide-spread remote work and remote shopping will weaken the need for people to live in specific area near where the jobs are and near where the stuff is, and perhaps without those forces, the downsides of urban living may override the upsides and urban centers will no longer hold together. (Just speculation, though, of course.)

[icebraining]

I think the message here is intended to be read by other new urbanists, not by the general public. The historical review and prediction of a new reset are just the prelude to set the topic, not the main message - that's the "threats" part.

[viraptor]

> I feel like I'm not really getting this article, though I am super interested in city planning.

The writing style was quite weird. I re-read some paragraphs a few times to realise he doesn't even make any point. It's like an old, ideology heavy manifesto, and so sure of how pure and right it is. It crossed some kind of line for me...

[larrydag]

I didn't quite get it either. Even the historical "resets" seemed too simplified. There are huge macroeconomic reasons for why dwellings and communities change. I find it interesting of no mention of a global economy influence and how the author seems to think everything is localized.

[sp332]

1. "Ecological urbanism" doesn't literally mean growing plants. It means letting the city develop organically without a top-down vision. 2. The other option in the article is people giving up on sprawl and moving back into denser, better-planned cities.

[RobertRoberts]

I am actually skeptical of any plan that calls for us to smash more people closer together. A development near my home wanted to smash 5 houses into the same location where 1 was before. With only 12 feet between, (6 feet of yard space for each house) chop down huge trees, etc... I won a small victory at city hall, got a bunch of people to show up, even measured the land and found their plans were 15 feet short! (greedy liars, it was unreal)

I found out that this developer had a history of paving over wetlands and doing whatever they wanted. (they were in lawsuits with the state over this)

And the kicker? He was a part of an initiative called "open spaces". The idea behind "open spaces" was to save the natural landscape, guess how they do that? By cramming in as many people into smallest housing they can, and by discouraging land ownership.

Greed is disguised at many levels, and I no longer take any writer's suggestions or criticisms at face value anymore, especially when money is involved.

[lotsofpulp]

Theoretically, I think it makes sense that the less resources people use, including space, the better it is for the natural landscape.

[viscanti]

People should be forced to use and own more resources than they want/need. Who cares that 6 individuals or families might have wanted an opportunity to have affordable housing and didn't need a larger personal area (because they couldn't afford it)? Shouldn't they just be priced out of the area so that existing home owners can preserve their monoculture? Seems like a cause worth fighting for.

[RobertRoberts]

I guess this situation can be easily misunderstood, we are talking small rural area here. With very cheap housing already.

The town near us already had this kind of housing built and it was all empty because they couldn't sell the houses because they were built too poorly. Plenty of older homes available.

This is _not_ San Francisco.

Edit: >Seems like a cause worth fighting for.

Only where it makes sense, if there is 100 square miles of open space around you, forcing the living space inside a small town isn't the same as using the left over space in a big city wisely.

[closeparen]

Why shouldn't a small town be compact and walkable?

[RobertRoberts]

I think you may not have ever lived in a small town. The town I grew up in is 3 times the size of my current town, and I walked all over it by 4th grade. Another town we visit frequently is almost 6 times the size of my current town, and is very easy to walk all over.

[snuxoll]

Sounds like San Francisco in a nutshell.

[RobertRoberts]

Theoretically in a way, but in reality, it's not better for people to have only rentals as options, and not be able to own land. It puts all the power into to few people's hands.

I suspect most people on HN live in large cities, and viewed my post as a negative, but I live in a rural area, and there is plenty of housing and space out here.

And the people that you think are altruistic about space, simply aren't.

[ocschwar]

"

I am actually skeptical of any plan that calls for us to smash more people closer together."

No such plan exists.

People smash themselves closer together when it makes sense for how they want to live. There are plans to allow it. Those plans should go forward because we live in a free country.

[RobertRoberts]

I really should have clarified that my situation described was in rural America. I realize that in larger cities the situation may seem completely different.

The open space group that I ran into did not care about good quality housing, just making money. And they do exist, but since this happened many years ago, I don't have any of my paperwork left, and finding this online is very hard because of the nature of searching for "open spaces".

The businesses involved are all rich land developers. And the kinds of houses they built were not only in-appropriate for the location (think basements in the south, or crawl space in the north) and abused town ordinances, lied to city councils, etc... It's amazing that people would think this stuff doesn't happen.

Is this the mob mentality we have now? That because city people need open space, because it's in short supply, that when a developer sucks up the space and uses it up that it must be ok because a lot of people fit there? But when a home owner wants to have space they are wrong?

[closeparen]

Imagine that we like sportscars, and you're bragging about your righteous activism to stop those evil carmakers who think they can get away with selling something smaller than a Chevy Tahoe.

You're on well-trodden argumentative territory making early-stage and un-nuanced NIMBY talking points; people are going to be upset. Don't take it personally. I'll assume you just aren't very familiar with the dialogue around this issue yet.

1) The portrayal of sprawl as a lower-greed state is... suspect. Big houses and big yards make it necessary to drive cars everywhere, burn gasoline, pollute the environment with tailpipe emissions, run an enormous military-industrial complex to rig governments and destroy countries to ensure sufficient supply of oil, etc. The status quo for American land use involves an awful lot of resource burn with a whole lot of profit along the way. People have accepted these things as part of the landscape, but are outraged at developers profiting on density. We're looking at this the opposite way: let's be outraged at the auto and energy industries destroying the world, and accept developer greed as part of the landscape while unwinding that damage. YMMV.

2) Pre-automobile settlements (which are more common in Europe, but do exist here) suggest a compact and walkable model, even for small towns, that has a lot of nice properties. Proximity and walkability enable neighborly interactions that Americans just can't have in the built environments you insist on. They enable self-sufficiency for children and the elderly, livelier main streets with more personal interactions and local businesses vs. the big-box-store-with-giant-parking-lot model, etc. HN has an unusually high concentration of people who like the idea of this, and are upset that it's so rarely legal. And it's illegal because of precisely the mindset and activism you describe.

3) "But when a home owner wants to have space they are wrong? You are NOT fighting to have space. No one is taking your land. You're fighting to force other people to have space. Some of us don't want it, don't want to pay for it, don't want to accept the isolation that comes with it... and you've taken it upon yourself to make it mandatory for us to have it anyway.

You don't have to like density. You don't have to want it. You don't have to live in it yourself. All we ask is that when other people want to live compactly, you get out of the way.

[RobertRoberts]

>All we ask is that when other people want to live compactly, you get out of the way.

Again, this feels personal. I merely shared my experience with greedy developers that lied multiple times. The largest showing at city hall in 20 years was over this developer's plans.

It's fair for me to say the community's understanding of space was valid.

[cpursley]

You're part of the problem.

Classic "Screw you, I've got mine" mentality.

[RobertRoberts]

Well this got personal fast. I live on a very small city lot in a small town in rural America. The lot next door was a slightly larger lot that had one house on it.

Later in time, a developer came along and put a split house on it, one for his father-in-law, and sold the other. I talked with this guy as he was building these houses. He was respectful and cared about the neighborhood.

I went to city council when this project came up for one reason, to support this developer. With a split house on this land, there is 20 feet and back yard space (about) and maybe 10 in the front, and 6 on each side.

I told city hall I approved this guys plans, and I was happy he was building something useful there.

I really wished people wouldn't jump to conclusions and ask reasonable questions before accusing and attacking.

[notfromhere]

suburb-style single-family tract housing isn't sustainable. You can live plenty comfortable in a large courtyard apartment as you would in a house, and bonus is its more efficient and environmentally sustainable to build that way

[RobertRoberts]

We live in rural America surround my forests, empty fields and agriculture. We have more land than we know what to do with. It's surprising that every commenter here made assumptions about my situation.

[notfromhere]

land isn't the issue. building out the infrastructure to support urban sprawl isn't cost-effective, and the property taxes alone rarely recoup the cost

[RobertRoberts]

There's only urban sprawl in urban/sub-urban areas. Different problems exist in rural areas.