Regaining human scale
June 8th, 2008 by Jim JustThere’s a fascinating panel discussion moderated by Lakis Polycarpou with urban theorists James Howard Kunstler and Nikos Salingaros in The Energy Bulletin (Part 1 here, Part 2 here).
Kunstler in a discussion of the history of urban theory I think correctly envisions the work that lies in our future:
“All the action, if there is any action in the years ahead, in my opinion, is going to be in retrofitting the existing towns and small cities. Not the suburbs. I don’t think the suburbs are really salvageable, myself. And I think the increment of development is going to be much smaller than what the New Urbanists are used to, because they could avail themselves of this tremendous finance that was around, and do these 400 acre megaprojects. But we’re going to be a far less affluent society when this economic shakeout is over, and we’re going to have far fewer investment resources.”
Nikos Salingaros points out that a major obstacle to this task is our existing framework of land use and zoning laws:
“It’s just such a nightmare of bureaucracy that only in one or two places in his whole career has he [Andrés Duany] been able to do it. He just usually looks at the obstacles and gives up, and goes outside the city to where a single developer owns the and land and can bend the zoning to build what Andrés would like. Inside the city it’s a bureaucratic nightmare, and that’s the reason why haven’t seen this applied to the interior of our cities. So James is right, this has not been done so far, but there’s no reason why we cannot then turn to the inside of our cities. But it’s a legislative and government problem.”
Here then are our tasks:
- Stop doing things that will soon be evident as wasteful and harmful (such as building more roads, bridges, and airports).
- Begin investing in infrastructure that will be essential to a functioning future (such as rail and renewable energy).
- Recraft our land use planning system to allow for, encourage, and even mandate villages, towns and cities that can function without automobiles.