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A New Urbanism

The Times has an interesting article on urban development. The author, Nicolai Ouroussoff, argues that the economic crisis has given Obama the opportunity to build the foundation for a new egalitarian urbanism.

Why does it matter? Let Ouroussoff explain:

THE country has fallen on hard times, but those of us who love cities know we have been living in the dark ages for a while now. We know that turning things around will take more than just pouring money into shovel-ready projects, regardless of how they might boost the economy. Windmills won’t do it either. We long for a bold urban vision.

With their crowded neighborhoods and web of public services, cities are not only invaluable cultural incubators; they are also vastly more efficient than suburbs. But for years they have been neglected, and in many cases forcibly harmed, by policies that favored sprawl over density and conformity over difference.

The U.S. is well behind in terms of bold thinking about the future of cities. This is, in part, because our political system gives inordinate power to nonurban places. Nowhere is that more obvious than in New York state.

And, of course, our fanatical laissez-faire ideology has made it possible for corporations to put their own private profit ahead of public good. (Case in point: the intentional resistance to a national system of high-quality public transportation. The "culture of the car" is good for the pollution industries, but not so good for the rest of us.)

But I do think we are catching on to the importance of sustainability, and that will be good news to cities.