Progressivism once stood for moving people out of cities, but now progressives looks disgust at the suburbs their philisophy had a hand in creating.

Moses, Mumford, and Jacobs would each be considered progressive by some, but disdained by others. I just can’t find any consistent moral or pragmatic philosophy behind progressivism.

It seems like more of a character code than a density code. But, it’s interesting that many planners and new urbanists want to instill a culture upon people – it doesn’t seem to different than the religious right’s attempt at the imposition of religious morals upon society. (originally a progressive intent too)

The same goes for New Urbanists who either seem to have an aesthetic fetish or odd environmental notions that the only efficient use is their form. And thus feel the need to impose those wishes upon society. Nonetheless, I do welcome the parts of the movement that wish to liberalize land-use regulations…

Although this may be too “trendy” or “fussy,” perhaps you may want to consider entitling your “Urbanism Legends” posts, “Urban[-ism] Legends,” instead? I think with the brackets (and, perhaps with the added hyphen too) it becomes clearer that you are commenting upon and adapting the well-known expression, “Urban Legend” (having the meaning, more or less, of modern day, non-rural folklore).

I like that idea. I think I’ll make that change…

What is that little rectangular box on the upper right side of each thread title? Initially it says “submit,” and then sometimes it says something about “points” with an up or down arrow too

It’s a little link to submit or vote up or down on a bookmarking site called Reddit. When an article is submitted to reddit, it often generates good traffic – higher rated articles are ranked higher an thus more widely visited. However, posts here are often obscure compared to articles on the stimulus, Obama, or Michael Phelps…

Is there a simple way to print-out “Market Urbanism” posts — i.e., a printable version button?
Done. That was set up, but must have disapearred when I updated the website features….

1) I am not as familiar with “form-based codes” as I would like to be, so perhaps I’m off base here, but it seems to me that form-based codes (at least as they are discussed by Rick Cole) are likely to be worse than properly written conventional zoning regulations.

Conventional zoning that has been, for lack of a better term, “loosely written” seems to easily provide for high densities and a great mix of uses and building types. NYC’s 1916 zoning code, although not as “loose” as it perhaps should have been, still allowed for high densities and a great diversity of uses and building types. In terms of core concepts, such zoning didn’t seem to me to produce sprawl! Which has higher densities and a greater mix of uses and building types?: the areas of NYC built between 1916 and 1961, e.g. Bay Ridge (built under conventional zoning), or Seaside, Florida (which, according to Cole, was coded rather than zoned)?

It’s hard for me to imagine that the same densities and mix of uses and building types found in many districts of NYC would likely be built under form-based codes — at least as these codes seem to be described by Rick Cole:

“The rules for form in a dense urban center [area] are [to be(?)] distinctly different from those for a predominantly residential suburban neighborhood. In each case, the form and character of buildings are [to be] “calibrated” to ACHIEVE A COHESIVE AND COMPLIMENTARY SENSE OF PLACE [emphasis mine -- BH].”

“For example, a form-based code could protect the existing scale of a neighborhood from the ‘teardowns’ of traditional homes for replacement by McMansions [is this really urbanism?] — or facilitate the evolution of an auto-oriented commercial strip to a mix of uses, including residential and/or office over retail [how, exactly?].”

How does a form-based code both protect the existing scale of a neighborhood and also facilitate an evolution to higher densities and a mix of uses AND building types?

2) Again I’m not as familiar as I would like to be with the lingo of “form-based codes” and “smart codes,” but one kind of new regulation that does seem to me to be useful are performance based regulations (perhaps these are what is meant by smart codes?) — for example, not forbidding nightclubs but having instead regulations on objectively measureable maximum noise levels. Perhaps, such functional or performance based reguations could also vary by zones in certain instances. However, this does not seem to me to be counter to conventional zoning, but rather a refinement of it.

3) One reason I’m so “suspicious” of New [Sub-]Urbanism is that I used to participate in a New [Sub-]Urbanist “list-serve” (internet mailing list), and it seemed to me that most participants (some of whom were very high profile “New [Sub-]Urbanists”) were really somewhat anti-city (and anti-marketplace) [sub-]urbanists at heart — it’s just that the [sub-]urbanism that THEY favored had higher densities and a greater mix of uses and building types than post-WWII auto-centered suburbs.

This is a very interesting post, as were previous similar ones on the progressive movement by Stephen Smith!

Aside from providing interesting new information, these various posts bring to mind (and help solidify in my mind), the strong “progressive,” “left/liberal,” “orthodox planning” connection to Robert Moses that I first really became aware of with a panel discussion I attended in the Fall of 2006 (?) on Robert Moses vs. Jane Jacobs and with the subsequent “catalog” and series of exhibits and panel discussions on Robert Moses that were produced during the Winter-Spring of 2007 (?).

Although “the Power Broker” does mention that Robert Moses was, professionally speaking, a child of the Progressive movement and does mention the strong support by progressives, like the owners of the “New York Times,” of many of his projects over the years, all the personal dislike for Moses and his “methods” among progressives also obscured, so it seems to me now, how much of a liberal, progressive, orthodox planner Robert Moses actually was. So at first I was both shocked and surprised that so many leftist / liberals / progressives were essentially bad-mouthing Jane Jacobs and jumping on the Moses bandwagon, and I had trouble understanding where they were coming from. (The fact that much of their writing and speaking was couched in hard to fathom, “academia-speak” didn’t help either.) But as I read more and more (and attended more and more panel discussions) the thrust of their arguments became clearer to me: “The real problem with Robert Moses was that, personally speaking, he was an obnoxious SOB, who created a lot of unnecessary enemies for himself and his projects. But most of what he did was actually the “platform” of leftists / liberals / progressives, and not only useful but actually necessary — without it NYC would have died. So we should really look past the idiosyncratic obnoxiousness and consider what happens to democracies if they never get a Moses every once and a while.”

Looking at it now, the best way to understand the animosity between Moses and progressives is to see Moses as an egotistical, renegade progressive who looked down at other progressives as being impractical dreamers and so went it alone with his own idea of regional planning.

A important book along these lines (although it is so poorly written, so it seems to me, that it’s hard to tell what the author himself really meant to say) is “The New York Approach” by the late Joel Schwartz. The author, who appears to have been a leftist historian at a local university, did an incredible amount of archival research (e.g., in the minutes of labor unions and various obscure local organizations) to come up with a very detailed history of the positive / negative relationship between Moses and various liberal organizations. Hillary Ballon, the curator of the Robert Moses exhibits (and co-editor of and contributor to the “catalog” of the exhibits, which is really more of a separate book on Moses) appears to cite “the New York Approach” as a key source book and inspiration.

- – - – - – -

I also hope to comment on the Rick Cole post, “Hoover’s Other Error,” later this evening.

A quick comment, though, regarding the first part of the post’s title (the “Urbanism” part) and then two general questions about the Market Urbanism blog set-up:

1) Although this may be too “trendy” or “fussy,” perhaps you may want to consider entitling your “Urbanism Legends” posts, “Urban[-ism] Legends,” instead? I think with the brackets (and, perhaps with the added hyphen too) it becomes clearer that you are commenting upon and adapting the well-known expression, “Urban Legend” (having the meaning, more or less, of modern day, non-rural folklore).

I’m not sure how successfully its worked for me, but that’s why I type-out the phrase, “New [Sub-]Urbanism,” when I refer to the movement that is more conventionally known as “New Urbanism.” I think the brackets and hyphen make it easier for others to see that I’m referring to what is conventionally called New Urbanism (but, at the same time, they allow me to make my own comment on the expression).

2) What is that little rectangular box on the upper right side of each thread title? Initially it says “submit,” and then sometimes it says something about “points” with an up or down arrow too, I think. If I remember correctly, the points don’t always seem to reflect the number of comments that have been posted to that thread, so I assume it means something else.

3) Is there a simple way to print-out “Market Urbanism” posts — i.e., a printable version button? I like to print-out longish posts, like “Urbanism Legend: Herbert Hoovwer” and “Hoover’s Other Error” (since I prefer reading such posts on paper), but I don’t what to wind-up printing everything else that’s also displayed on the screen too.