Where Goes the Neighborhood?

By Tom Breuer, The Scene. Posted July 17, 2002.

James Howard Kunstler has a pretty interesting theory about why EuroDisney flopped in France while its counterparts in America continue to be wildly popular.

In "Home From Nowhere," Kunstler's follow-up to his pull-no-punches "The Geography of Nowhere" -- his original jeremiad on the diminishing returns of our nation's growing suburban infrastructure -- Kunstler says it all has to do with the way America organizes its public spaces.

Accustomed to sprawling commercial districts, disconnected residential areas and characterless work environments -- an unattractive, sprawling landscape which, he says, is geared wholly toward the needs of the car rather than the needs of people -- for most Americans, Disney World's plastic, faux neighborhoods, with their "quaint" park benches and street lamps, represent a soothing slice of nostalgia.

In Europe, where public spaces are still attractive, connected, easy to get to, geared more toward the pedestrian, and, perhaps most importantly, feel like real neighborhoods, the Disney magic falls flat.

"The public realm in America became so atrocious in the postwar decades that the Disney Corp. was able to create an artificial substitute for it and successfully sell it as a commodity," writes Kunstler. "That's what Disney World is really about. In France, where the public realm possesses a pretty high standard of design quality and is carefully maintained as well, there is much less need for artificial substitutes, so few people feel compelled to go to EuroDisney."

Although Kunstler is extremely pessimistic about the prospects for many of America's living spaces, his rather forceful criticisms do resonate with many who have found more malaise than kinship in today's suburban neighborhoods.

While environmentalists tend to see suburban sprawl as an unsustainable form of growth that continually gobbles up a limited amount of land, critics like Kunstler see another form of devastation: to cities' aesthetics, their sense of community, and the city centers which have been abandoned for the promise of big houses and big discounts outside of town. But while suburbia and sprawl development have become the dominant forms of growth in America, slowly a small chorus of voices tied into what has been dubbed the New Urbanism is starting to raise objections.

In a nutshell, the New Urbanism is about building neighborhoods the way we did before World War II, with mixed-use zoning (so people have easy access to employment and shopping), streets that are safe and welcoming for pedestrians, architecture that is attractive and inviting (with front doors, porches and windows facing the street), and neighborhood centers with formal civic spaces and squares.

In short, New Urbanists say, towns and cities should be a lot more like the older infrastructure in our cities, which to some degree still exists in our downtowns and older neighborhoods, and a lot less like the isolated residential, commercial and office conclaves that characterize suburbia. They should be neighborhoods, where people can meet, go to a corner store, get to work without relying on long, wearying commutes, and where kids and the elderly can have a full stake in public life without having to beg for rides.

While the Congress for the New Urbanism charter talks high-mindedly about encouraging architecture and landscape design that celebrates local history, climate, ecology and building practice; about fostering universally accessible public places and community institutions; and about creating neighborhoods diverse in use and population, much of the real appeal of these ideas can be summed up in what the congress calls the "Popsicle test": An 8-year-old in the neighborhood should be able to walk to a store to buy a Popsicle, without having to deal with fast-moving cars.

Even though some see such a criterion as naive, starry-eyed nostalgia that hearkens to a world that's gone and all but forgotten, in some areas such concepts are actually on the way back, thanks to New Urbanist principles. In Hartford, Wis., a Milwaukee-area suburb, some of the ideals of the New Urbanism have taken root. The town of 11,077 has adopted the motto "work where you live, live where you work" and has taken steps to make that motto work.

"We don't want people going to work in Milwaukee and then buy groceries on their way home to Hartford to sleep," said Hartford city planner and community development director John Spielmann in a December story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "We want to attract and keep residents who have a stake in their community."

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