[A-List] The CNU

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Jim Kunstler

www.kunstler.com (May 21 2007)


New Urbanists from all over the land - and as far away as Australia -
converged in Philadelphia this past weekend to sort out their gains and
losses for the year against the background of a nation punch drunk on
"liquidity" and free-floating dread. The city of Philadelphia looked
perkier than anyone could remember - at least the square mile emanating
in a quadrant roughly southeast from William Penn's statue atop city
hall to the burnished alleys of 18th century Society Hill. At lunch hour
Rittenhouse Square was full of young cubicle critters seeking air and
light, and six hours later the bars were doing a brisk business in
twelve-dollar martinis.

The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) was formed in 1993 by a cadre of
revolutionary architects who had decided that enough was enough with a
nation bent on committing suicide by strip mall. From the start, their
mission was bold, coherent, and heroic: to present a clear alternative
to the mindless devouring juggernaut of suburbia.

Also from the start, they were accused of being "elitists",
"un-American", "enemies of art and free expression", "snooty enablers of
white yuppie separatists", "footlings of the Neo-cons", and "sentimental
saps" - all for suggesting that perhaps human beings might benefit from
living in places worth caring about.

The New Urbanists became known mostly for the real estate ventures that
were produced in their name - first the iconic "new town" Seaside,
Florida, and then scores of other projects based on what they called the
Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND). Some of these projects were
badly compromised by the zoning boards who ruled on their details. Some
were wannabes and co-opted rip-offs. Some, like Vincent Graham's I'On
project in Mt Pleasant, South Carolina, achieved high levels of artistry
despite the obstacles thrown up by the mental defectives who opposed them.

The New Urbanists were equally active in the existing cities, leading in
the adaptive re-use of industrial ruins, brownfields, and whole
districts that had been written off as hopeless beyond the pale. Figures
like Mark Nikita and Dorian Moore, who worked in the rough context of
downtown Detroit, and Ray Gindroz of Pittsburgh who pioneered the
conversion of reviled and decrepit public housing all over the country
into places where a human spirit might rediscover itself.

The greatest achievement of the New Urbanists in these years was not the
long list of TNDs or the urban interventions that saved whole districts,
but in the retrieval of knowledge and principle that had been thrown
away by a hapless and craven officialdom of planning - abetted by the
mandarin ideologues who ruled the university architecture schools, and
who were dedicated above all to defending the antisocial prerogatives of
their jive-narcissism. Despite all that, the New Urbanists worked
doggedly to reconstruct a body of culture (that is, urban design). They
processed it in a series of brilliantly clear manuals like the Transect
and the Smart Code, and gave everyone from the carpenters to the bankers
a lexicon for understanding the difference between plain crap and stuff
with a plausible future.

The New Urbanists came on the scene just as the final exuberant phase of
the cheap oil fiesta was getting underway - meaning the climactic phase
of American suburban expansion. They positioned themselves as a minority
opposition to the "conventional" developers who utterly dominated the
landscape. The things that were built under the New Urbanist name
represented probably less than two percent of everything built since
1990. The work they did occurred as a valiant swimming against the tide
- or, more specifically, against a huge blast of reeking, toxic entropy.

The final blowout of cheap oil is now ending, and the suburban
juggernaut is entering its death throes. It wasn't slain by the New
Urbanists, but they will be the last ones standing - just as the little
warm-blooded mammals were the last creatures standing when the dinosaurs
expired in the warm Cretaceous mud. The focus of their work will
certainly have to change. There will be no more suburban subdivisions
(or the accessories and furnishings of them - the strip malls, Big Box
pods, and fried-food out-parcels), and the TND will emerge not as a
counterpoint to all that crap, but as the template for a redefined type
of village or town scaled to the new realities of available energy.

We will be inhabiting the terrain differently from now on. Whatever
intact farmland remains will have to be reserved for feeding ourselves,
and the "countryside" that has been regarded as having only scenic or
recreational value for so many decades, will have to be both productive
and carefully tended by human hands. Our big cities will certainly
shrink, contract, and the fortunate ones will redevelop and re-densify
at their old cores and around their waterfronts. The part of
Philadelphia that we were in last weekend may be about as big as a
sustainable city can get - minus the skyscrapers, which, alas, will be
obsolete.

The demographic shift to come will be a shocking reversal of what has
been going on since the start of the industrial revolution. The small
towns and small cities of America - the places that have moldered in
desolation and squalor for decades - will be coming back to life,
surrounded by an agricultural landscape shaped by human attention.

What we'll need in this process will be the most valuable things that
the New Urbanists recovered along the way: the knowledge required to
create a human dwelling place with a future. That was really the extent
of their ambitions all along. But it was too straightforward for a
twisted culture to understand. In a few years, even the mental
defectives and the professional jive-narcissists will understand where
we've been and where we are going.

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/


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