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Konrad1

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  • Konrad J. Perlman
    Description: I am a retired city planner with 43 years in the field, and will publish posts and commentaries about city planning/New Urbanism, politics, books, movies, and other matters of personal interest.

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john massengale

Konrad,

What you say is true.

There's also the problem of the critics being uninformed and displaying the biases of architecture.

For example, "the fact that NU takes no strong position of effective programs to fund "affordable housing" and produce a significant supply on a regular schedule." What about all the work that went into the Hope VI program? All the work that's done with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Or all the work that's gone into reintroducing and relegalizing affordable units like granny flats, mews housing, live works and apartments over the store? We will never have enough affordable housing as long as we buy into the argument that everyone must have their own single-family house.

Or what about practises like Urban Design Associates? The majority of their work is for affordable housing on urban and brownfill sites. Maybe some of your friend's criticism is simply uninformed. Does he know that the Gulf Coast charrette had a social justice team and an environmental team? Or is he just assuming the worst because that is the norm among many architects?

Architects also attribute work to heroic architects, because Modernism taught us to do that (imagine how Lizz must feel). In fact, New Urbanism rejects the model of the Heroic Architect in favor or team work. That's what the 200 person Gulf Coast charrette was all about: only a movement that stresses collegiality could have produced so much from so many people in such a short time. There simply wasn't time for one person of one office to try to determine what was done.

John

Douglas Willinger

What about the Washington DC highway planning-anti-planning that places a disproportionate amount of the vehicular traffic through less affluent Anacostia?

Or NYC with its pushing the traffic more through the Cross Bronx Expressway instead of spreading the burden?

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