It's one of the times I'm concurring with David Brooks. His piece goes well with a lot of the new research that revolves around urban planning.
Brooks writes:
"You may not know it to look at them, but urban planners are human and have dreams. One dream many share is that Americans will give up their love affair with suburban sprawl and will rediscover denser, more environmentally friendly, less auto-dependent ways of living.
...
America will, in short, finally begin to look a little more like Amsterdam."
Read it all here.
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5 comments:
good piece. it made me think of the Richard Florida ideas about clustering and the creative input of those who think alike who flock together.
i don't know about Amsterdam, though. too many bikes....
witty.
I can understand the idea that Americans want it all. The bustling life of the city appeals to me, but at the same time I can appreciate the slow pace of life of rural towns. It's the middle ground, suburbia, that is hell to me.
I think a little urban-replanning is called for in the future. A friend of mine once argued that gas prices in America should be raised dramatically in order to encourage people to use other modes of transportation, and I argued that this fails to take into account the fact of suburban sprawl. Most of us can't just give up our cars; we need them to get to our jobs way across town. The better solution, aside from getting serious about alternative energy sources, is building communities that are more integrated with homes, stores, jobs, parks all intermixed. Some communities like this are already beginning to be planned and built.
I liked his piece. The new awareness on climate change and the environment is bound to have an immediate impact on how the cities are perceived.
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