Yes, Let's Build New Cities

The debate is not sprawl vs infill

I've read a number of appraisals of Conor Dougherty’s piece in the New York Times about the need to sprawl. So far I've found none of them truly satisfying nor really hitting the mark. Of course, most of what I'd come across would be highly critical, but even then, I'm not sure the criticism is spot-on.

First off - no, I haven't read the piece. So shame on me. But I have read so much about it, I have a good handle on the overall narrative. What I'd offer is this - a lot of the negative responses seem to come from the camp of, "we have existing cities and towns, let's fix them. We don't need more outward development." And, look, I empathize. I live and work in an existing historic city, and I'd like it to improve and have the population grow. I'd love a pro-growth attitude in my city, and I’d love to see reforms implemented that make it improve. In fact, I work on that sort of stuff literally every day in my day job.

So, I care a great deal about existing places. But there’s a reality here that must be addressed.

First, I’d also say this whole conversation reminds me a lot of the early days of the New Urbanism. The debates were often of the "we should only do infill in cities" vs "let's build new towns" variety. Both made good points, but the new town / new community argument largely won. And, it had an incredibly positive impact. The new communities built in that era showed it was possible to build beautiful, walkable places that people really loved. Up until then, that simply wasn't happening. It helped create a revolution in design, in policy-making for cities, and in thinking about place management. It created the world of "urbanists."

Put very simply - this was all possible because developers went to places where it was much easier to build. Working in the older cities was extremely slow and hard, even though virtually everyone I know in the New Urbanism world loves old cities. But in the process of designing and developing new communities, we learned there was incredible value in doing so-called greenfield work. The reforms made simply wouldn’t have been possible by focusing only on redevelopment and infill.

I'd suggest that today we're in a somewhat similar place. Once again, it's become incredibly hard to build in existing cities and towns. A raft of regulations and processes and politics, mostly state and local, make it vastly harder and more expensive than most people realize. And while reforms are happening, they often come at very slow pace.

So, while I personally have no love for what is often called "sprawl," I do see tremendous value in the building of new cities and towns, from scratch. This generation could go beyond what New Urbanism v1 did, and build places that have much more Missing Middle housing, greater variety, more pedestrian-only spaces, and better designs for families. The new places could take the next step in policy-making that allows them to evolve gradually over time, which many first-generation communities lack. We could explore new governing models, like is discussed in this fascinating podcast about Charter Cities, Seasteading and Freedom Cities.

So if we're talking new cities and towns that have those sorts of traditional human qualities and aspects to them, then by all means. If we’re talking bold new experimentation, let’s do it. We'd be wise to embrace that, and really dumb to fight it.

If we’re just promoting the relentless, dumb, mechanical expansion of 20th century suburbia, well, no, that’s not a good thing at all. We don’t need any more of the mass-produced, siloed and fiscally unsustainable model that came out of “reforms” of the 1920s.

It's a very American tradition to create the new thing, vs fixing the old one that's broken. Not everyone likes it, but it’s that sort of spirit that almost always moves society forward and produces the greatest improvements. In that process, we also tend to light the fire of competition from older places, and they start to fix themselves. When someone says we should only work in existing places, that sounds to me a lot like dogma. And I’m no fan of dogma.

Create the new, it’s a good thing. We don’t have to be stuck with what exists today.