{"id":975,"date":"2012-01-16T21:02:51","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T04:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=975"},"modified":"2013-01-28T07:31:34","modified_gmt":"2013-01-28T14:31:34","slug":"whats-in-a-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/?p=975","title":{"rendered":"What’s in a Name?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The new year has brought a new name to the New Urban Network<\/a> website and the print newsletter New Urban News<\/em>.\u00a0 They\u2019re now called Better! Cities & Towns <\/em>(hereafter, BCT<\/em>). \u00a0In announcing the changes editor Robert Steuteville<\/a> noted that the last two decades of New Urbanist effort has largely been dedicated to creating workable models and techniques for reforming the built environment. \u00a0The next two decades will likely bring widespread implementation of New Urbanist ideas in thousands of communities having different physical, cultural, political, and economic conditions.\u00a0 Steuteville notes that while there\u2019s a consensus that mixed use, compact communities are what\u2019s needed in today\u2019s world, that\u2019s not enough to seal the deal.\u00a0 We need much more detailed knowledge of design and implementation.\u00a0 BCT<\/em> aims to report on the success (or lack thereof) of various models and techniques.<\/p>\n

While some<\/a> take the name change as evidencing the victory of New Urbanism over its competitors, Michael Mehaffy<\/a> is more circumspect in arguing that the New Urbanism is simply our best current bet to effectively guide implementation.\u00a0 <\/strong>Although not a panacea for what ails cities\u2014indeed, argues Mehaffy, we need to \u00a0\u201c<\/strong>eschew ideal positions\u201d if we\u2019re going to effectively tackle the challenge of rehabilitating our often disordered, dysfunctional built environment\u2014New Urbanism is particularly useful for meeting the challenge.\u00a0\u00a0 For one thing, it embodies \u201cnetwork\u201d thinking with respect to how we model urban design (namely, by integrating knowledge contributions from multiple disciplines including law, ecology, and engineering), and in what we build (specifically, pedestrian-scale communities that produce \u201cproximities\u201d of social interaction and exchange capable of stimulating creative enterprise). \u00a0For another, it embodies a conservationist ethic as concerns resources, as captured by BCT<\/em>\u2019s tagline \u201cThe decision-maker\u2019s bridge to stronger, greener communities<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 In short, for Mehaffy New Urbanism promotes a \u201cnatural urbanism\u201d that\u2019s both economically viable and energy efficient.<\/p>\n

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Market Street, Downtown Celebration, Florida (Wikipedia)<\/p><\/div>\n

Although he\u2019s critical of idealist positions I\u2019m not sure Mehaffy completely breaks with idealism in favor of a more charitable pluralism.\u00a0 He issues a call to co-opt the tactics and theories of Landscape Urbanists<\/a>, and ridicules architectural postmodernists as self-indulgent apologists for \u201cend-stage industrialism\u201d\u2014thereby implying that New Urbanism is, indeed, the only game in town if we\u2019re going to solve real problems and improve the quality of life. But all things considered Mehaffy hits some good notes. \u00a0We do need to think about, and take responsibility for the potential consequences of architectural practice on human life. \u00a0There\u2019s nothing deterministic or paternalistic about this; it simply makes good sense to evaluate models in terms of their potential social consequences.<\/p>\n

Mehaffey describes the philosophical perspective that informs his modeling approach as \u201cProvisional Scientific Realism.\u201d \u00a0What I\u2019d call it, much more simply, \u00a0is pragmatism<\/a><\/em>. \u00a0I certainly agree that any model of urban design should be sensitive to natural resource concerns. But it seems to me that the bigger challenge for 2012 is designing for\u00a0cultural<\/em> sustainability.\u00a0 Advocates of New Urbanism routinely spice their essays and manifestos with talk about culture. \u00a0Mehaffy alludes to the culture-bound nature of our design models, our abundance of \u201cmonocultural subdivisions\u201d, and the need for a \u201cbroad cultural assessment\u201d of how architects and designers approach their practice.\u00a0 But what, specifically, are we talking about here? \u00a0 What does culturally-sensitive New Urbanist work look like?\u00a0 Might it stipulate the need for greater architectural and planning diversity than New Urbanism has heretofore been comfortable with? \u00a0Might it mean making peace with automobile culture and parking lots if, as Michael Kimmelman<\/a> recently suggested, the latter can usefully function as city commons or public squares (as well as hard plazas where diverse entrepreneurs might gain some economic independence through their participation in informal \u201cbazaar\u201d<\/a> economies)? \u00a0Might it even privilege, in some contexts, parking lots over \u201ctown centers\u201d that, in\u00a0one particularly cogent analysis<\/a>, \u201ccommodify a nostalgic notion of the [homogenous] American small town?\u201d \u00a0Might it involve abandoning some of the other foundational \u00a0principles that have guided New Urbanist work over the last 20 years?<\/p>\n

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Food trucks line up in the parking lot of the Hard Rock Seminole Casino (Veda Jo Jenkins\/sflimages.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

We can better highlight this need by calling not for a \u201cnatural (low carbon, low resource) urbanism\u201d or a \u201cwalkable urbanism\u201d or a \u201c(re)new(ed) urbanism\u201d but rather a pragmatic urbanism<\/em><\/strong> that more seriously engages with questions of both<\/em> nature and \u00a0culture. \u00a0\u00a0In so doing we should avoid provincialism in the search for useful models, and do a better job of understanding the nuances of culture (e.g., sub-cultures, sub-ethnicities, regional and religious differences, etc.) instead of just its central tendencies or popular idealizations. \u00a0A \u201cbroad cultural assessment\u201d of architectural and urban design theory might look, for starters, to the Intercultural Cities<\/a> initiative in Europe.\u00a0 While thus far focused on urban issues other than the built environment, including education, housing, and policing (but see\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0for work that addresses issues around the use of public space), this international research initiative is prompting some useful thinking about civic strategies that can facilitate cultural interaction and resolve cultural conflict (see also here<\/a> for a view from Canada). Embedded in this work are, no doubt, many implications for how we might design and build cities and towns that can better accommodate, and bridge, intercultural differences.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new year has brought a new name to the New Urban Network website and the print newsletter New Urban News.\u00a0 They\u2019re now called Better! Cities & Towns (hereafter, BCT). \u00a0In announcing the changes editor Robert Steuteville noted that the […]<\/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":[18,16,10,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intercultural-city","category-new-urbanism","category-sustainability","category-urban-studies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1H2bI-fJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","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=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2481,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions\/2481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.interculturalurbanism.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}