What Makes a Place Good for People?
I want to get back to the idea of human scale and how the best parts of Yucca are the little spaces between and around the buildings instead of the big parking lots and super wide street frontage. Everywhere I go in the world I find some of the best streets are barely wide enough for a car to pass through…
The Other Side of the Tracks, by John Sanphillippo
“Tribal and narrow minded” LOL!
In December, the Metropolitan Council of Minneapolis and St. Paul is scheduled to vote on a vision for the region’s housing and transportation future. “Thrive MSP 2040” is the council’s comprehensive development plan for the seven-county Twin Cities metro area for the next 30 years. It’s a regional growth plan that will result not in a cure for the area’s ills, though, but in a virus that will kill its vitality.
The Minneapolis/ St. Paul area is one of the most livable regions in the nation. That’s not because residents were forced onto transit and into high density housing, as ‘Thrive’ will do. Growth occurred in a natural manner, in an area with great schools, because people here had the freedom to choose the size of yard for their kids, and the ability to embrace the natural openness of the region. The vigorous suburban growth that resulted has helped our vitality, despite past decisions from the Met Council to neutralize it.
The Metropolitan Council isn’t alone in adopting New Urbanist plans on a wholesale basis. Their approach, and the problems that go with it, are being repeated by many planning boards nationwide. The 350-page ‘Detroit Future City’ plan is a tunnel-vision strategy based on the same New Urbanist thought. With the best of intentions — goals of avoiding pre-fabricated monotony and sprawl, and creating affordable, livable communities — municipalities are actually writing prescriptions that will do just the opposite.
Would the Twin Cities Survive New Urbanism? by Rick Harrison
New Urbanists are just another kind of philosopher king.
Tags: cMNjWXPARIw, John Sanphillippo, Rick Harrison, urbanism
