Austin Williams presents a critique of New Urbanism and its influence on rebuilding efforts in New Orleans.
"...the ideas behind New Urbanism have seldom been intellectually destroyed, with detractors preferring to sneer at the clichéd attempt at Classicism...New Urbanism is fundamentally a reactionary movement for urban stasis...he vacuum of architectural discourse...has cleared the way for New Urbanism to look like a dynamic organisation with exciting ideas. It has also been helped by the fact that New Urbanists do have a moral framework that has been unchallenged by the architectural mainstream...It's hardly surprising, then, that after years in the wilderness, New Urbanists believe that their time has come...It is this conception of the 'right thing' that underscores the proscriptive nature of New Urbanism's planning programme..."
"While these sound like pleasant homilies and an innocent nostalgia for the reinvigoration of neighbourliness, there is a less tolerant aspect to the pattern-book approach of the New Urbanists, in which disharmony can be designed out and neighbourliness engineered in...Given that so-called 'progressive' urbanists have fled the stage, the New Urbanists have been thrust into the limelight in New Orleans."
FULL STORY: New Orleans and the New Urban vision
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