We firmly believe that a critical chunk of decisions in today’s world will be made at the metropolitan (we say “citistate”) level. Regions are the critical action arenas of the 21st century — the organic economies, natural watersheds, media catch basins, commute-sheds, workforce and education networks of our time. Regions are the platform that empower communities to achieve sustainability.

Now we’re seeing the emergence of the “new media” which seems to focus heavily on individuals, their opinions, and a brand of neighborhood-oriented, often hyper-local journalism. Which raises the problem — reporting on developments of regionwide issues doesn’t seem to be on anyone’s radar screen! How can quality, informed journalism about metro-region wide trends, developments, perils, opportunities, gain significant audiences in this new media era? How can we go beyond legacy media to use of new media, more citizen voice and participation in regional debates?

One idea: we call it the “Regional Jolt.”

This would be an electronic broadside, on a fresh topic, sent periodically to an expansive list of players in selected metro regions — newspapers (metro and local), broadcasters, Internet news sources, civic groups, chambers of commerce, CDCs, academics, bloggers. There could be accompanying podcasts, fresh news bulletins, a response/debate Internet site with wikis and RSS feeds. The “jolt” would be designed for maximum impact.

At least one major media outlet and at least one major regional civic organization in a region would have to agree to watch for and give serious consideration to the regional broadsides. That’s key, notes Hodding Carter, to get truly active buy-in from the selected partners.

The broad range of recipients — from mainstream to alternative media, chambers of commerce to reform civic action groups — would deter “bottling up” of any truly relevant issue. The release would empower any recipient to identify steps their region could take to match the leaders’ performance. Our Associate and San Diego-based columnist Rich Louv, who inspired this project, was intrigued how this would mean that the legacy news, alone, couldn’t set the agenda.

What’s the goal here? To “raise the bar” of expectations, then action, on challenges facing the citistates. Regions would be “jolted” by concrete examples of their competitors’ superior achievements. It’s an ever-expanding list — Energy (bringing renewables to scale), Economic Strategies (for expanded job opportunities), Green Systems (for health and solutions to global warming), Transit (for increased mobility), Assured Food Supply (developed regional food sources), Health (regional systems of “wellness zones”), Schools (regional compacts on breakthrough strategies), Workforce Quality (training pathways, community/technical college excellence), Water Management (environmentally-conscious fresh water/stormwater systems), and Security (regional preparedness for terrorism, natural disasters). Our friend Chris Peck editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal , suggested we float ideas among regions to see which issues they’d consider important or interesting. He,for example, would add how to deal with very high poverty levels, along with regional angles on drug and prison issues.

The broadsides would include a short introductory article highlighting the issue at hand and lead regions in attacking it; the most relevant regional performance indicator charts (a suggestion made by Citistates Associate Bill Stafford and friends at the Puget Sound Regional Council); a list of chief sources for interview in the lead regions; ranges of backup articles and resources. The broadside elements would be recrafted regularly, perhaps through a wiki, based on experience and response from the target regions.

Keith Schneider of the Michigan Land Use Institute says: “Metro regions are big enough for civic leaders to see how swift changes in energy and land prices, population growth, technology, and globalization are changing Americas 21st-century development. But they are small enough for leaders to be inventive, practical, cooperative, responsive, and effective.”

Our concern is — what’s the prospect for important region-wide change if new media directions leaves citistate regions in the dust?

Our regional reports and 1992 book Citistates were trailblazers in today’s fast-expanding American regionalism. We’ve sought to forge a new path of forward-oriented, goal-oriented journalism focused on the regions that are home to 80 percent of Americans. We’re unashamedly serious about illuminating these modern citistates’ needs, dilemmas and breakthroughs, because America’s future in a century of globalization rests largely on them.

We’d like your thoughts and ideas on this topic. Use whatever communication tools you like but do let us know!

PS — We have turned off the weblog posting option as spammers have made the whole process of registration too unworkable right now. You can send your comments to fpeters at this website. We hope to do a follow-up weblog on the responses we receive. Many thanks.

Here are five themes I’ve suggested to Associates of the Citistates Group for discussions during our summer gathering this year. We will post some of our Associates responses in the next weblog.

(1.) Climate change. Concerns about global warming have escalated rapidly with new scientific projections, melting conditions in the Arctic and Antarctic, the recent Gore film, etc. If we assume this threat is real, how do regions prepare now? Or as King County (Wash.) Executive Ron Sims asks — assuming it’s 2050 — looking back, what should a region have been planning, choosing as action in 2006? (I also discussed the topic in a recent column).

A subtheme: In an increasingly hurricane-threatened world, in the wake of the Katrina debacle, how can/should regions plan for major natural disasters (and/or terrorist attacks, pandemics), and how should they relate to state and national governments in that effort?

2.) Energy shortages. The soaring energy prices of 2005-2006 suggest a return to “normal” ($40 or under) oil prices may never happen, especially with escalating Chinese and Indian demand for oil. Prices north of $100 barrel are in fact more likely. In a society still overwhelmingly reliant on by auto and truck use, how can/should regions react — in new transportation systems (toll roads, rail transit, etc.), in shift-over to renewable fuels (biofuels, etc.), in truly aggressive ways to concentrate population and rein in energy-consumptive suburban sprawl?

A subtheme: Imagine the current Mideast conflict, or actions by other oil-producing powers, causing a sudden, emergency shortage of oil in the U.S. What kind of back-up planning would save regions from devastating blows to their economies?

(3.) Mega-regions. Robert Yaro, our Citistates colleagues Robert Lang and John Hall and others are advancing the idea of “mega-regions” — sets of aligned citistate regions, from the Northeast Corridor to the Great Lakes, the Sun Corridor (Phoenix-Tucson) to Cascadia — as the population, economic locus of 21st century action. Are they right? Beyond advanced transportation networks (high speed American rail at last?), what’s to be gained from a megapolitan view of today’s urban forms?(See also Peirce column July 17. 2005)

(4.) Shifting Demographics: The immigration angle — who can come to America and its regions, who can’t (or should be kept out) — has heated up. And what of immigrants as an evolving, more significant political force? There’s a new solidarity evolving among immigrants as a result of the conservative legislation the U.S. House passed, while some U.S. cities pass legislation to keep illegal out. And what of low income alliances– immigrants and allies organized locally? An example– In L.A., Villaraigosa as mayor suggests a municipally-based immigrant/minorities power, liberal on wage-housing-environmental issues. Is this a future of our cities/regions?

Immigrants have also been responsible for economic revival in many of our cities and in a rapidly aging population, are likely to continue to be America’s workforce for now and our future. How can we transform immigrant workers into knowledge workers from K-12 preparation to affordable/accessible higher education? And how do we prevent a whole new series of gated communities where families with young kids are not welcomed?

On a related track, our Associates Manuel Pastor and David Rusk were both involved in a recent Ford Foundation backed report, Edging Toward Equity. The idea is that urban poverty and suburban sprawl are often driven as much by public policy as market forces, and that neighborhood-based community advocates as well as leaders of older suburbs need to learn to make their case regionally. There’s a new theme of American purpose involved. As Pastor wrote in the report:: “Regional equity is not just about transit-oriented development, cross-jurisdictional tax-sharing, or employer-oriented job training, although its commitment to such pragmatic practices is one of its appeals. It is also about offering a new vision of America in which cities are strong, racial conflict is superseded, and millions more join the middle class.”

(5.) State/regional ties. Several of us have thought for years of how states should view their metro regions as a smart corporation sees subsidiaries — as potentially strong profit centers to be incentivized, not micro-managed. More and more, it’s clear regions need to work collaboratively with, not at odds with their state governments. And that states need strong metro regions. Our colleague Mary Jo Waits, new head of the Pew Center on the States, is interested in this agenda.

In her request to interview the Citistates team, independent writer and author Desiree French explained, “Community builders are people who have made a tremendous difference in communities by helping to spark revitalization efforts or influencing positive growth. Specifically, ULI says the work Mr. Peirce and Mr. Johnson have done documenting the plight of our nation’s urban areas has had a significant impact on the way they have evolved”.

Detroit, a region long plagued by bitter city-suburban conflicts overlaid by racial differences, has been the last of all major American regions to start a serious debate on regional collaboration. But now it seems more ready than ever. A concluding session of the early June Mackinac conference included a cordial joint session of the region’s so-called Big Four — Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, the Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, and Nancy White, chairwoman of the Macomb County Board of Commissioners. The session was even international, including Mayor Eddie Francis of just-across-the-river-Windsor, Ontario. The Big Four commissioned a veteran Michigan politico, John Hertel, to service as a consultant and de facto lobbyist in building the regional transportation authority and system the region so glaringly absent up to now.

But can America routinely build light, airy bridges that cross streams or gorges beautifully and sturdily, like Germany? Build high speed train lines like France, or giant gates that shut out the sea, like Holland? Set up a universal tolling system that allows trucks to travel without using toll gates, like Switzerland?

So far, the answer is “No,” or at least, “Not yet.” It’s clear that this country now routinely lags behind Europe and Asia in the construction of advanced infrastructure systems. Americans like to think of their country as excelling in everything, but many of the nation’s roads, bridges and general infrastructure have a kind of crudity that is shocking for such an advanced and rich country. As we continue to think about rebuilding New Orleans, and why the levees there failed, all this is something to think about.

In recent decades, examples of what might be called “our infrastructure gap” have proliferated. It’s no longer a question as to whether we lag behind, but how far. China, still a developing nation, is building a high-speed, high altitude train with a pressurized cabin, like a jet. The Malmo-Copenhagen bridge that arcs from Denmark to Sweden, the Chunnel between England and France, and simply the average automobile tunnel or pedestrian escalator in Western Europe are routinely more refined than in this country. Although we are a wealthy nation, our relatively poor infrastructure systems make the quality of life poorer in many respects for the average citizen.

This is particularly true when disaster strikes. A front page New York Times story on Sept. 21, 2005 by Christopher Drew and Andrew Revkin suggests that the levees failed around New Orleans principally because they were poorly installed and designed, not because of unexpected wind and water. Hurricane Katrina, although a category four to five storm overall, did not directly hit New Orleans and its winds near the levees did not exceed 100 mph, the authors said. Such winds were substantially below the Category 3 specifications of the levees. Although the story was a great example of hard-hitting journalism, the photograph that accompanied it said a lot in even fewer words. A broken concrete flood wall shown next to a canal looked more like sections of the infamous Jersey barriers had been plopped down next to a river bank than an advanced infrastructure system.

If the United States lags in its infrastructure — and to me there is no question that it does — than the natural question is, Why? One reason is that we as a nation resist higher levels of taxation. The percentage of our economy dedicated to government expenditures is among the lowest of any industrialized country. So things are often done on the cheap, if at all, even though this ultimately costs us money. In Louisiana, the failure to spend around $10 billion to strengthen levees and control the Mississippi River means that the federal government is now contemplating spending up to $200 billion to rebuild New Orleans and other affected areas. And this doesn’t include the huge costs that insurance companies and private businesses and residents will incur.

But less taxation isn’t the only reason. A full investigation would delve into things like our procurement systems, which favor the lowest bidder rather than the most skilled. Fitting in with this is a general lack of respect for skilled, blue-collar labor. This shows in our education and training systems. Although this country has probably the best higher education system in the world at the top levels, it’s not as good at churning out highly trained and highly-paid mid level engineers, technicians and skilled laborers that would erect a bridge or build a road or levee. The workers who construct the light airy bridges common around Europe are highly skilled, and highly paid. In the United States the more brutish concrete slab and heavy steel bridges are the default option in part because we choose not to invest in the systems that would create skilled and well-paid workers to erect the alternatives to them.

It appears we are paying a price for our education system and an economy that is tilted toward winner-take-all outcomes. If true, this is sobering because such problems are not changed easily. They take decades to fix. Such questions are of particular concern to the region around New York City, where I work and live. We have the most infrastructure intensive region in the country, and our prosperity depends in the long run on upgrading that infrastructure. Our cities don’t have levees like New Orleans’, although we may need some additional storm protection, but our train system, bridges and water pipes keep our region humming and prosperous and need to be continually maintained and upgraded.

After a year of working in Louisiana, Mt. Auburn Associates believe that culture — abundant, renewable and clean — is Louisiana’s metaphorical oil. Our study, Louisiana: Where Culture Means Business focuses on creating new jobs, new enterprises and a better quality of life for the producers of that culture: Louisiana’s people. Sponsored by Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu and released four days before Katrina hit, it found that cultural enterprises provided tens of thousands of jobs and accounted for 10% of the New Orleans economy — a number that excludes related jobs in the tourism industry and also surpasses that of the oil, gas and chemical industries.

So has Katrina washed away these plans for cultural economic development? Far from it. What is required is an investment in people and incentives for ‘human capital recovery’.

First, there must be a serious commitment to developing a local, skilled workforce. The Creole building crafts and artisans created the architectural landscape of New Orleans. If this landscape is to be preserved, a new generation must be equipped with preservation and reconstruction skills. Similar opportunities exist in the culinary, music, and film industries. Cultural skills training programs, therefore, should be fast tracked in the redevelopment efforts.

Second, a Cultural Conservation Corps must be established to identify and support New Orleans’ creative diaspora. New Orleans’ Offbeat magazine and WWOZ radio station have created online registries of displaced musicians. Efforts like these need to be supported and expanded.

Financial incentives must be developed and offered to artists and creative enterprises on par with those offered to conventional businesses. A recovery package for New Orleans needs to target cultural entrepreneurs — those individuals willing to take the initial risks of building an enterprise in the city.

Finally, Louisiana needs to rebuild its cultural industries with new attention to the people who originate the culture — the Indians, African slaves, Acadian and Caribbean exiles, Creoles and free people-of-color. Its distinctive culture was created largely by poor people who often fail to reap a proportional share of its economic benefit. As Louisiana rebuilds it needs to ensure meaningful economic opportunities for all Louisianans.

Rebuilding New Orleans will require vision, commitment and resources. But whether Katrina leaves behind a legacy of loss or a rejuvenated cultural metropolis is a choice, not a foregone conclusion. Bring back the artists and the culture — and they will bring back New Orleans.

He’s right! I’m sure I’m one of millions who remembers childhoods biking far and wide, instinctively “free range.” I got my chance in the 1940s on a sturdy single-speed cycle, exploring the wondrous rolling hills and old stone houses and forest patches of Chester County, Pennsylvania. Unwittingly I was converted to a love of the natural, as well as farm settings, that effectively controls my writing perspectives to this day. And I’ve kept on biking!

How do the next generations get there? Louv’s book is all about that. Parents can do lots to free their own children, he suggests, but adds: “Ultimately, we need an institutional network that would reach across issue boundaries, joining zoos, aquaria, and natural history museums with urban designers, livable cities organizations, the child obesity groups, educational organizations, service groups and environmental organizations, etc., etc.

I suppose Louv’s right about the institutions. But couldn’t we just set the kids free on their two-wheeled, self-propelled, cycle-where-one-will “learning machines”?

From Dan Burden’s email —

From one risk taker to many others. Tony Hiss (author of The Experience of Place) sent me the following article by Neal Peirce. I cannot emphasize strongly enough that Neal, Richard and Tony are right on track …. By 1990 we had narrowed the free range of children to one-ninth of what it was when I was a child. Indeed, I suspect if I were to map my personal childhood range, it eventually grew to 1:400 of current children. A worthy and easy bit of science could collaborate this.

I think to this range we could measure time/duration/saturation (By age 15 my daily self-discovery time grew to 12-14 hours per day), as well as distance, diversity and variety of experience. By age 20 I was describing the bicycle as a “learning machine” since it often took me to distant places never seen by car, foot or any other means.

By age 21 (still a child), despite living in the Midwest, I was walking,free range, the neighborhoods of Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant with a growing hands-on interest and experience in sociology and geography. It is our ability to be “free range children” that determines a big part of ourability to learn, our humanity, civility, confidence, useful knowledge, wisdom, maturity, ability to share and our ultimate achievements in life.

By age 23 I was writing letters, poetry and prose under trees no one had ever sat under looking out over bays few people had ever seen. I was already writing about situations and experiences in life most of my friends had not lived.

Do these articles and books by Louv (earlier Childhood’s Future) imply that children’s strongest neural pathways now have more to do with the latest modern “Pac Man”, “Newspaper Boy”, or “Bad Boy” electron adventure (something too new for my media deprived brain) than being a real newspaper carrier?

In real life I recall jumping real curbs with a personally rebuilt Schwinn cruiser that refused to collapse under my tall, lanky body weight and added pressure of 80 pounds of papers. It was a bike I maintained by learning from my dad and friends how to tear apart and rebuild every part of a bike, including complex internal hub brakes. This brake got cleaned, polished and reassembled, often several times before it worked.

Free range includes learning precision skills of well directed underhanded tosses of fast-folded papers (while riding no handed) to exact center porch landings … learning to collect money from deadbeat or busy household newspaper customers at the age of 12-13, how to accept semi-threatening but friendly teasing of customers in a very different neighborhood than where I lived, such as a beer drinking cop sitting on his front porch who called my dad (firefighter) a “nozzle squeezer.” Free range is also learning the
habitat and habits of creek critters, how to track on crisp early morning snow and ice the range and habits of mink and muskrats, ponder how a tree became bent the way it did, recognize a snake species from its discarded skin, or where to find the best patches of milkweed, pond lilies or bull brushes….

Maybe Willy Nelson’s song, “Mothers don’t let your children grow up to be Cowboys ….should warn them to keep their children caged better than my mom did.

It’s hard to believe, but William Fulton, in his California-based Planning and Development Report, suggests we’re seeing at least a flashback to the 1960s. There’s reason, he suggests, to see George Bush as a Lyndon Johnson-style, “Washington-Knows-Best” politico, dictating to state and local governments, ditching ideas of shared federal responsibilities and leaving critical decisions to local officials.

Here are some excerpts from Fulton’s analysis –

In the popular press, Bush’s proposals for both Section 8 housing vouchers and Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding have been characterized as classic Republican “cutting and gutting.” The president’s “Strengthening America’s Communities Initiative” is likely dead for this year, but he’s not likely to give up.

On Section 8, Bush is seeking to take a housing assistance program revamped by the Reagan administration on a voucher model and move it toward a block grant model. On the CDBG program, Bush is proposing to do away with a block grant program shaped by the Nixon administration and replace it with a new set of programs that are targeted at economic development efforts — and housed in the business-oriented Department of Commerce.

Throughout it all, one thing is clear: Bush is proposing a far more radical shift than either Ronald Reagan, who happily ignored most urban programs, or his father, who appointed the inspiring Jack Kemp as HUD secretary. The big criticism his appointees offer: today’s urban programs “currently lack clear goals or accountability measures.”

But that was the whole point when the Nixon administration created the CDBG program in 1974, mostly as a sop to the emerging suburban constituencies of the time. The Great Society effort of the 1960s had created a passel of categorical urban aid programs. It was Nixon, seeking to mollify a Democratic Congress even while nurturing suburban Republicans, who rolled these programs into block grants, giving local governments more spending flexibility. The CDBG has survived with bipartisan support ever since.

The Bush proposal would re-establish strong federal control over the goals and purposes of community and economic development programs by using the money to target specific development strategies in specific distressed communities. In this way, the Bush administration proposal represents an eerie mirror image of the Johnson administration’s original vision of urban aid.

Bush’s Section 8 reform proposals are even more indicative of how things have changed for Republicans during the last 20 years. The last major Section 8 revamp came when Reagan ditched Johnson-era housing programs aimed at housing production in favor of voucher programs that gave low-income renters the ability to obtain housing in the private marketplace.

But over the long term maintaining a market-oriented voucher program has proven more expensive than building affordable housing for the simple reason that there is no brake on rents in the open market. Congress has also expanded the Section 8 program in recent years.

The administration appears to be hoping to free up money to fund a home ownership program that would focus on families that are poor (60% of median income) but not extremely poor, as Section 8 does. Bush is proposing a Single-Family Ownership Tax Credit program, similar to the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program.

Bush could be right. Maybe a more targeted community development program would be more effective than a block grant program at achieving certain goals; an ownership housing program might help stem the Section 8 program’s red ink. But we’re learning a lesson: one generation’s magic bullet – liberal or conservative – can become the next generation’s boondoggle or sacred cow.

You can see the complete text of Fulton’s article with this link.

Maybe I should have expected a quick response in e-mails of despair from rail advocates. One for example noted:

(Flyvbjerg) is categorically wrong on his facts, but the anti-city, anti Eastern, anti-transit kooks in the Bush Administration will seize upon it. The facts are exactly the opposite: in my experience over the last 16 years, rail studies usually underestimate ridership because there is so little reliable data.

Even the DC Metro, a whipping boy for over-budget projects, is net a good thing: the investment around Metro stations, especially in formerly derelict areas of Washington following the DC riots, literally saved the city.

Marshall: I reviewed Megaprojects, a book by (Flyvbjerg) last year, for Architectural Record. Here is some of what I noted.

“The limited thesis of the first book, Megaprojects, written by academics from Denmark, Sweden and Germany, appears true, as far as it goes. Using the Chunnel between Paris and London, the Great Belt link between Denmark and the European continent, and the Oresund bridge and tunnel between Malmo in Sweden and Copenhagen in Denmark as their chief case studies, principal author Bent Flyvbjerg and his colleagues show that proponents routinely underestimated costs and overestimated benefits, which usually meant ridership. They prove their point with reams of data. They say the trains through the Chunnel, for example, still have only about 50 million passengers a year, versus the 100 million predicted for its first year in 1994. Flyvbjerg argues for a more realistic method of project evaluation and gives an example of such in his last chapter.

But their method of analysis is as flawed as the ones used in the projects they criticize. In general, the authors pay scant attention to the idea that infrastructure spending generates economic growth even if it requires government support. The authors are constrained by looking at only easily quantifiable costs and revenues. What they can’t easily measure, they don’t see.

“There is correlation between investments in infrastructure and economic growth, yes, but cause and effect have not been proven to anything that may be called scientific standards,” Flyvbjerg said in an email exchange. “The same correlation holds for, say, investments in refrigerators, electric shavers, and a host of other items that go hand in hand with economic growth, but few have argued that investment in such devices cause growth.”

I beg to differ. Even a casual look at transportation historically shows that infrastructure spending drives economic growth in more fundamental ways than routine consumer spending. If Flyvbjerg’s green-eye-shade approach to infrastructure had been used, New York would have never built the Erie Canal in 1817, the United States would not have built the interstate highway network in the 1950s, and France would not have built its high-speed train network in the 1990s. But such projects helped keep these states’ citizens prosperous.

Rather than criticize the Chunnel for its poor performance, Flyvbjerg might have modeled what would have happened if government, rather than the private consortium, had built the Chunnel. If the Chunnel was publicly built, the fares could have been kept lower to insure greater use of a public asset.”

Not so fast, replies our Citistates colleague, Peter Katz, urban guru and founding executive director of the Congress for New Urbanism. “True urban life will prevail, simply because the value it generates is SO much greater than the suburban crap we’ve been building,” Katz maintains.

Here’s how the exchange has been running:

Katz to Kotkin:

Can’t disagree with the numbers side of your recent Post article, but you’ve fallen into the same trap as Joel Garreau in saying that suburbs will eventually mature to become good places.

They won’t because their weak physical structure will cause them to remain in perpetual adolescence. The road networks can’t survive another layer of growth. Lang understood this point made by Duany and other New Urbanists and wrote about it in Edgeless Cities. Some high value centers (such as Lenox Square in Atlanta’s Buckhead) will be “reformed” but most will limp along pathetically for decades, possibly hundreds of years if land values remain low.

But a key mindset HAS changed (see cult favorite, Penturbia by Jack Lessinger, for more on this idea) as indicated by the media mentions you cite. True urban life will prevail, simply because the value it generates is SO much greater than the suburban crap we’ve been building. Maintream developers and builders including Pulte and Centex (the nations 1st and 2nd largest homebuilder, respectively) are already starting to see this and are moving aggressively into the more promising urban markets. As always, its “follow the money.”

Kotkin to Katz:

I think you greatly underestimate the desire for a suburban lifestyle and the ability for things to change. As to tradition “urban” living, it will grow with some of the population, but it will not be predominant.

I also note that your two addresses are at least somewhat suburban. There is a lot of variety in suburbia — I live in an old 30s suburb about 30 minutes from downtown L.A. But it is suburban, private homes, although we can walk to a supermarket.

For every dollar the developers are putting into traditional urban areas, i would guess they are putting ten somewhere in the suburbs. The urban development gets press because the media likes it and, in some places, it’s a bit of a “man bites dog” story. Again, population growth has the potential to bring some people into the inner city, but the numbers pale to those in the suburbs.

The suburbs, for better or worse, are our future. and the longer the New Urbanists fight this, the more irrelevant they will remain. as I tell my students at SCI-ARC (Southern California Institute of Architecture), the future is in making the suburbs better.

Katz to Kotkin:

You noticed my addresses. Let me complete the picture for you:

My location in Alexandria (and my permanent legal address) is actually a few blocks away from the mailing address you noted (a post office box). I live in a New Urban community called Carlyle.

As for progressive, politically correct living, it tops the charts in most categories.

It’s a transit oriented development (5 minutes to one Metro station, 8 minutes to another), built on a remediated brownfield site (a former railyard). It’s also mixed use, containing over 6 million square feet of office space, a federal courthouse and the new US Patent and Trademark office, retail (mostly office service, a Whole Foods under construction, and a few delis now, but more coming), and 1,500+ units of rental and for-sale housing (existing and planned). 33% of Carlyle’s 80 acre site is open space, found in a variety of squares and small parks, a regional greenbelt, and landscaping adjacent to streets. I drive to many suburban locations just west of me, but I’m able to easily walk to my teaching job at Virginia Tech (8 minutes east, in Old Town). Once there, I’m in the midst of restaurants, coffee shops, a yoga studio, other institutions, offices and a further 5 minutes’ walk to a scenic, historic waterfront.

Old Town Alexandria, by the way, is one of the oldest urban settlements in America, dating to well before the founding of Washington, DC. George Washington was reputed to have surveyed parts of Old Town. More recently (1989), the Carlyle development, where I live, was laid out by the New York-based firm of Cooper Robertson. Despite some early setbacks, it’s now at 75-80% completion.

There is a civic association that has come upon the scene since the neighborhood was founded. My neighbors and I just put on a design workshop to help the developer understand what all of us (residents, business and property owners, office workers) want to see in terms of the programming and design of our large public open space at the center of the community. Land within Carlyle commands some of the highest prices in the DC metro area. Despite this, several pension funds are bankrolling a few developers at top-dollar rates to buy and build on any piece of property that becomes available here.

Upon completion, the Carlyle development and the adjacent East Eisenhower community, will contain more square footage than there is office space in all of downtown Philadelphia. Think of it as a new downtown for the region on a similar scale as Tyson’s Corner, but unlike Tyson’s it’s planned to function with pedestrians and transit in mind.

It’s not perfect, but it’s lots more urban than the dinosaur suburban places you’re suggesting that people love so much. Good planning, not location, is what sets Carlyle apart from the sprawl.

Is there too much parking? Yes. the suburban office developers and leasing guys cling to their outdated rule-of-thumb ratios, forgetting the two rail stations close by. But alas, the agents have had no trouble leasing offices here lately. Could it be the transit nearby? Not a bad feature considering Northern VA’s legendary Beltway backups.

Does it feel like a true city? Not yet, but as Andres Duany says, a city is like a stew. It needs time on the stove for the flavors to intermingle; for the spices to percolate into the meat and vegetables. New places rarely feel authentic. But after 10 years, Disney’s Celebration is even starting to feel like a real place: I photographed some broken park benches on my last trip there!

By the way, each unit in my townhouse complex has a two car garage. My neighbor to one side owns a Ferrari and a Porsche SUV, next door on the other side is a Toyota truck and another Porsche. Just past him, another Ferrari and high-end Audi sedan. A few doors down, a Humvee, 2-3 Mercedes SUVs, and a Cadillac Escalade SUV. My ten year old Volvo is getting an inferiority complex.

The point: My neighbors, who clearly have options available to them (and some very nice cars), are voting with their dollars for a highly urban lifestyle that also happens to accommodate their cars. It’s important to note that my neighbor’s cars get used far less than those of other Alexandrians, who live just a mile or so to the west.

My neighbors have never heard the term New Urbanism. They could care less. But they paid a whole lot of money for homes that give them options most people in the suburbs don’t have. And, according to my colleague Chris Nelson, their New Urban homes are going up in value faster than the conventional suburban “product” that you claim has “won.”

Joel, in your article, you’re painting the places you talk about with a very broad brush, and you are confusing places that others refer to as urban, suburban and new urban with reckless abandon. We’re in agreement that “the future IS in making the suburbs better.” We even agree that the village approach is a good way to go (though I question whether examples like Valencia are actually villages or just gussied up malls). Perhaps we all just need a better definition of the three terms I mentioned before: urban, suburban and new urban before the discussion can really begin. The US Census department gives us little guidance in this area: Robert Lang has cited some hysterical example of what they consider urban vs. suburban. Certainly all the things you cite are indeed happening. Culture is coming to some suburbs, but it’s returning to many downtowns. Some suburbs, such as Bethesda are urbanizing, while other downtowns are still suburbanizing, with expanding doughnuts of vacant land in use as parking around them, skybridges and quasi-public atria at their centers that shut down at 5:00.

There are trends and countertrends. Clearly most of America relies on their cars as the primary device around which they organize their lives. And yes, most people will opt for suburban schools over urban, particularly if tuition is covered in one’s highly subsidized house payment. Private school may work for Jason alone, but when Jennifer comes along, so does the moving van. These are the economic realities of modern-day America. We both know it’s far from a level playing field.

But when Mom and Dad want really great live theater, or a fabulous meal, they’ll suffer the inconvenience of riding transit into down town, or they’ll pay a fortune to park. Perhaps it may be just the elite who’s doing so, but that elite historically fuels the trends that others follow.

The suburban dream, after all, was a mass-market response to house envy by a rising middle class looking at the country mansions of the wealthy. It’s a well documented marketing success that fostered the model that has prevailed for several generations. But today, that model is experiencing stresses, and it’s not really delivering on its many promises (fresh air, open space, good schools, low price, etc.).

Certainly schools in the suburbs are still way better than their urban counterparts, but experiences like Columbine tell us that even suburbs have their problems. Traffic, social alienation, the list of growing stresses goes on and on. The suburbs lack the underlying infrastructure, social and physical, to enable them to mature gracefully. The stresses create outcomes that aren’t pretty. As I said before, some places like Buckhead in Atlanta will grow despite the problems, but most will simply stall out. More important, those who have a choice, like my neighbors, will look to new options.

The preference I’m citing is far from being the norm, a majority, or even a well-documented trend. But, according to my own personal trend meter, the New Urbanism HAS captured the imagination of the same innovators and early adopters who are responsible for a number of small recent innovations, such as the internet. Charles Brewer, the Atlanta developer who was the founder of Mindspring, an early internet service provider, often says “the New Urbanism is the next internet,” presumably because of its potential to revolutionize the way we live.

I began my response to your article by saying that I don’t disagree with the numbers you reference. Indeed, research by Bruce Katz of Brookings shows that the good stuff I’m pinning my hopes on (revitalized downtowns and suburban centers, better NU communities at the edges), is still a drop in the bucket. But other research just now coming out of Brookings from Chris Nelson, my previously mentioned colleague at Virginia Tech, shows that new demand for houses is moving drastically away from the Leave-it-to-Beaver model of a single use, single-family home, to a more urban multi-family type. Our job, as writers and so-called thought leaders, should be to lead others to new ideas and approaches. We shouldn’t be selling the status quo or even the deconstructivist clap trap that masquerades as innovation at schools like SCI-ARC.

Rather we should be finding and promoting real innovation that offers real options to a broad cross section of Americans. On that point: I’ve cited several examples of the choices made by the wealthy in my remarks above. That could get me in a lot of trouble with the PC police, but as Vincent Scully observed in the closing paragraphs of his afterword to my book, The New Urbanism (I don’t have a copy with me, so my words will likely be quite different than his): if you make urban places good enough for the wealthy, the rest get to come along for the ride. Peter Katz

PS: My West Coast address, in Del Mar, where I live with my fiance, IS unashamedly suburban, albeit with a great historic town center about 2 miles from where we live. Where we are, looking out over the Pacific Ocean, we can walk easily to several restaurants, a state park, a string of wetland preserves, several small professional offices, and a manicurist (my fiance likes that). That kind of proximity, which was important to us, is only shared by about 3% of the homes here in North County, San Diego.