Comments on The Stranger News Department Suggests

link?

www.friendsofseattle.org

http://www.lgc.org/ahwahnee/principles.html

Seems pretty straightforward, and something most Stranger readers would be in favor of. I can see this as a solid framework for city planning, and I bet Peter Steinbrueck loves it.

Is there a less successful movement, that has betrayed its principles more, in the past fifty years than New Urbanism? Have you SEEN what they've actually accomplished on the ground? Have you seen Northwest Landing down in Dupont (north of Tacoma on I-5, classic sprawl territory)? It's everything we should be fighting against, not plotting to flatten downtown for.

I really wanted to go but campus drama involving Votes of No Confidence and my parliamentary procedure-nerd side prevented me; I sent the girlfriend in my stead. I can't wait to see what direction they take as time goes on!

New Urbanism is what yuppies do before they sell out and try to shove unpaid overpriced underwater tunnels down our throats.

I haven't read that document either, but I'd just like to say as a former Allied Arts board member for two and a half years (2002-2005) that other than a couple of idealistic holdouts on that board (who? Davidya Kasperczyk and Phil Wohlstetter, if they are still there and I hope they aren't) Allied Arts has become the most knowinger-than-thou, out-of-touch, yuppie-domination, death-of-imagination organization that I have ever had the misfortune of working with. Impenetrable, idiotic and lapdog city, baby.

Smells like a Transportation Choices Coalition front. The bullet points dovetail with King County/City of Seattle's desired zoning and land use changes, and Sound Transit's "next phase" marketing pitch.

Stranger reporters: Please do some digging and tell us who's behind this new group. Their goals sound fine (yawn...21st century Planning 101), but who are these folks and what is their agenda?

New Urbanism doesn't have anything to do with yuppies. Yuppies have never shown any interest in living in New Urbanist utopias; that's why they're such a failure. Yuppies want to live in Old Urbanism, the chaotic, jumbled, mixed-up, dare-I-say-funky neighborhoods that exist in most older cities, not through the agency of any planners or designers but from the rank speculators of an earlier age.

New Urbanists are hampered by the fact that they have NO IDEA how vibrant urban neighborhoods are created. No one does. It's like farming truffles; it doesn't work. So what you get instead is marketing, marketing that can be applied to cheesy sprawl developments that ape urbanism but fight against it in every real way. Like Northwest Landing. When you boil it down, New Urbanism is nothing more than a set of pretty watercolors and a handful of Pantone cards. Sort of like the People's Waterfront Coalition.