by James A. Bacon
Andres Duany, a prime force behind the New Urbanism movement, dresses impeccably, exudes Old World sophistication and speaks eloquently in a restrained and understated manner. Jason Roberts, founder of The Better Block organization, wears dorky clothes, laughs like the goofy but affable guy next door and gesticulates excitedly when he speaks. Their styles couldn’t be more different but their substance is very similar: They have lost patience with the bramble patch of local government regulation that hampers neighborhood and community revitalization. And they get things done.
Duany’s new crusade is “lean urbanism.” By lean, he envisions an alternative to the red tape that that strangles the bottom-up, entrepreneurial revitalization of American communities. “Common sense has been almost completely lost in my profession. There are too many protocols in the way,” Duany told Anthony Flint with Atlantic Cities.
The lean urbanism concept, he says, is like a software patch, or a workaround – ultimately a guide or a tip sheet to navigate the complicated, and often very expensive, maze of working in the built environment in the U.S. “It’s about knowing that with certain building types, under a certain threshold, you don’t need an elevator. Or a sprinkler system. A lot of developers know that, and we want to daylight that. We want to present that thematically.”
Roberts is a master of what is often referred to as Tactical Urbanism — grassroots, impromptu takeovers of public space — to drive change at the block level. In the Ted talk below, he describes how his “just do it” approach — civil disobedience against arbitrary zoning rules that, say, prohibit awnings or ban congregations of people on sidewalks. His sidewalk sit-ins have have sparked revitalization along a former Dallas street car line…. which he also hopes to revive. Redevelopment, he says, is “hamstrung by a series of rules that were put into place years ago that we don’t even know why we’re doing it, we just keep doing it.”
Philosophically, conservatives should sympathize with this impulse within the Smart Growth movement. It’s a core conviction of conservatives that federal government regulation, while sometimes necessary, tends to grow to excess and choke off private initiative. Periodically, that regulation needs to be revisited, pruned back and adapted to contemporary conditions. Conservatives should apply that same insight to state and local regulation, especially the welter of rules regulating land use and development.
A Better Block movement is emerging in the City of Richmond: Better Block RVA. Maybe we can start a similar Better Subdivision movement here in the ‘burbs of Henrico County. Either way, the key is to stop slavishly accepting the rules just because they’re the rules. If the rules don’t work, get them changed.
