{"id":2652,"date":"2013-05-05T09:34:56","date_gmt":"2013-05-05T15:34:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2652"},"modified":"2013-05-06T06:21:28","modified_gmt":"2013-05-06T12:21:28","slug":"how-many-rules-are-there-for-smarter-smart-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=2652","title":{"rendered":"How Many Rules Are There For \u201cSmarter\u201d Smart Growth?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Adams<\/a> identifies ten rules that incorporate some of the original Smart Growth Principles<\/a> while punching up those that urge greater respect for the character, identity, and established planning processes of an existing community.\u00a0 He also adds a \u201cBonus\u201d 11th<\/sup> rule which is to preserve and enhance the existing density and urban fabric.<\/p>\n

Responding to Adams,\u00a0Kaid Benfield<\/a> says there are 15 rules. These include Adams\u2019 10 plus another 5 that are about greening urban buildings and infrastructure and designing for age and family friendliness. Like Adams, Benfield adds <\/i>a Bonus 16th<\/sup> rule:<\/p>\n

Pursue communities suitable for a diversity of incomes, housing types, ethnicities, and old\/new residents. That\u2019s the future of America; surely it should also be the future of smart growth.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"SmartGrowth.DNR.800\"<\/a>

Smart Growth (Credit: Maryland Department of Natural Resources)<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0Of the 20 commentators on Benfield\u2019s piece David W. Goldberg hits the nail squarely on the head:<\/p>\n

Kaid, thank you for adding 16, though I would like to see it as #1. Every day I am surprised by how long it takes my planner colleagues to get around to talking about people\u2026 When we planners are at our best, we’re placing people and place together. Smarter, Smart growth matters because OUR lives depend on it. \u00a0A set of updated rules that did this might begin with “Communities where diverse households of all ages, types, culture and incomes call home, and have access to the resources they need to lead fulfilled lives, and share in the benefits of growth.”<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mr. Goldberg has it exactly right.\u00a0 Diversity must become more than a \u201cbonus\u201d bullet point, or an add-on, or an afterthought. It should be Priority #1. And maybe it’s the only<\/i> \u201csmarter smart growth\u201d rule that matters because the others have become so well-rehearsed and even\u2014no pun intended\u2014pedestrian.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/i>They fail to directly address today\u2019s and tomorrow\u2019s most compelling demographic reality which is the growing ethnic diversity of urban populations.<\/p>\n

To make headway in meeting this challenge we should problematize that which is held constant or taken-for-granted by both<\/i> Adams and Benfield. Specifically, the concepts of \u201ccommunity\u201d and \u201cneighborhood identity.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 These are more complicated entities than most planners\u2014and even most \u201ccommunity\u201d members\u2014think. \u00a0At least that\u2019s my experience from watching the planner-developer-citizen dynamic at 9th<\/sup> and Colorado<\/a> here in Denver. \u00a0Previously on this blog<\/a> I\u2019ve channeled the geographer David Harvey\u2019s classic statement<\/a> about the rhetoric of community that\u2019s used by some planners and developers to justify a particular kind of \u201curban village\u201d development.\u00a0 The same can be said for those who frame smart growth in terms that emphasize a community\u2019s \u201ccharacter and identity\u201d:<\/p>\n

Community has always meant different things to different people\u2026the idea attracts, drawing support from marginalized ethnic groups, impoverished and embattled working-class populations\u2026as well as from middle- and upper-class nostalgics who view it as a civilized form of real estate development encompassing sidewalk caf\u00e9s, pedestrian precincts, and Laura Ashley shops.\u00a0 The darker side of this communitarianism remains unstated: from the very earliest phases of massive urbanization through industrialization, \u201cthe spirit of community\u201d has been held as an antidote to any threat of social disorder, class war, and revolutionary violence. \u201cCommunity\u201d has ever been one of the key sites of social control and surveillance, bordering on overt social repression. Well-founded communities often exclude, define themselves against others, erect all sorts of keep-out signs (if not tangible walls)\u2026 \u201cRacism, ethnic chauvinism, and class devaluation\u2026grow partly from the desire for community\u201d such that \u201cthe positive identification of some groups is often achieved by first defining other groups as the other, the devalued semi-human.\u201d As a consequence, community has often been a barrier to rather than facilitator of progressive social change\u2026 All those things that make cities so exciting\u2013the unexpected, the conflicts, the excitement of exploring the urban unknown\u2013will be tightly controlled and screened out with big signs that say \u201cno deviant behavior acceptable here.\u201d<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Planners, architects, neighborhood associations, city leaders and others must start \u00a0attending to the underclasses who are left out of discussions of any<\/em> kind of growth, smart or otherwise. These folks are silent and\/or invisible because they usually don’t have the time or means to participate in the “community” conversation.\u00a0 Moreover, they are not ordinarily targeted by official outreach efforts. It\u2019s almost certain, however, that the urban underclasses desire better jobs, quality affordable housing, amenities that include value shopping alternatives, a variety of transportation choices, and perhaps other things that so far are known only to them. \u00a0It\u2019s a good bet that our marginalized communities would also value a bit more variety in the design of private and public built spaces, as well as more flexibility to use these spaces in keeping with different cultural values and needs .<\/p>\n

\"2<\/a>

Credit: Partners in Salford<\/p><\/div>\n

In short, if Smarter Smart Growth Rule #1 (after Goldberg) is Pursue communities where diverse households of all ages, types, culture and incomes call home, and have access to the resources they need to lead fulfilled lives, and share in the benefits of growth,<\/i> then \u201cBonus\u201d Smarter Smart Growth Rule #2 (after Saitta) is Pursue conversations about the private and public built environments of communities that are socially and culturally inclusive<\/a><\/i>. Lessons on how to do this are available if the purview becomes much more global<\/a> and intercultural<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Adams identifies ten rules that incorporate some of the original Smart Growth Principles while punching up those that urge greater respect for the character, identity, and established planning processes of an existing community.\u00a0 He also adds a \u201cBonus\u201d 11th […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[18,16,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intercultural-city","category-new-urbanism","category-placemaking"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-GM","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2652"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2664,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2652\/revisions\/2664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}