“New Urbanists think Charleston is a pattern book, but really it is what happens when the descendants of British colonials don’t have air conditioning. Charleston is a lesson in emergence, not DPZ urban design.”

It is very difficult to engage politicians without The Pretty Pictures. You know what I mean–the highly idealized and stylized renderings of the project embellished with lots of theoretical peripatetic people, with lots of disposable time and income milling about on a Chamber-of-Commerce beautiful day. It doesn’t matter that a prospective tenant won’t be able to stay in the black. You can even say something like “you and I both know the final result is not going to look like The Pretty Pictures.” They may even acknowledge this. But still they want the Pretty Pictures. Because the Pretty Pictures fulfill the human desire for clairvoyance.

The problem with that is that the process of urbanization employed before the 20th century was of course a spontaneous order, in other words nobody really understood how it worked. It had spontaneously come into existence thanks to the fact that on open land you could go from anywhere to anywhere, and from there all that was needed to keep it working was a few constraints on development. But with a more advanced transportation system like what is required for cars that spontaneous growth process is no longer workable, and so urbanization had to be conducted with whatever processes science most understood. Those turned out to be greatly inferior to the complexity of a spontaneous city.

I am all for limitations that lead a level playing field, because I believe you encourage good design and good outcomes when you don’t favor one mode or pattern book over another. When you allow for a variety of solutions to coexist, in a way that Euclidian Zoning or the Transect are not able to encourage. (Despite their best intentions) I’m against the hubris of zoning, but I’m not against planning. I’m not against smarter land use and transportation integration, hence I’m a planner. I’m a designer. I live and work in my social situation for humans.

Regarding humans vs ants: I think that humans, acting in their own interest, while respecting the interest of all other humans, pose little threat to society’s (the colony’s) best interest. If regulations are necessary, they should be limited to weeding out fraud and protecting property rights / civil liberties. But that’s a deeper philosophical conversation that I’d be glad to have, if you’d like.

There, is, of course, also the prickly social question of what to do with the fact that humans aren’t ants, they are “self-reflective” agents…often they do exactly opposite of the colony’s best interest. Often, they do not like “spontaneous order”. The beauty of an ant colony is none of the agents think for themselves, Woodie Allen ant notwithstanding. So…let’s hope when we talk about Emergent Urbanism, we take our sense of sanity with us, that we have a robust anthropology. While we ponder how to change the social infrastructure that led to cul-de-sac suburbia, let’s think about the deeper motivations shaping city form. The New Urbanist want to regulate suburbia away, let’s come with clearer thinking and solutions other than patronistic or socialist means of engagement.