Jacobs also attempts to outline several ways to allow chaos while encouraging the proper type of growth — particularly in the realms of real estate financing and the size of land parcels in order to maintain the small foot-print buildings and visual rhythms that she states as preference.

I also remember her discussing (in a look at the planning for the World Trade Center site — after 9/11 — perhaps in an issue of Metropolis) a school that was built in her adopted home of Toronto. The architects had not designed paths or sidewalks, but waited until the kids walked through the snow to see where they had naturally walked before using that as model for later landscape work. She suggested that instead of “extending the grid” in a planning paradigm at the WTC site, that architects allow a more organic and natural process to take place.

She also advocates for dead ends, short streets, streets that give way to paths and stairs. And other things to disrupt the rational grid and ideas of classically trained architects and planners.

Since reading Jacobs in the early 1990s, I’ve felt that planners would do much better at advocating for more radical ideas than TOD and smart growth, but really get behind the idea of urban limit lines and radical changes in zoning and real estate policies to favor individual land owners over large developments.

But the rub: it’s easy to say that rational planning is the result of “modernist” sensibilities, but it really goes much deeper than that is at the core of all the neoclassical ideals upon which Western democracies are based. There is a strong preference to order and rationality over disorder and chaos that is rooted in cultural attitudes that can be found in the architecture and planning of Thomas Jefferson to Daniel Burnham to Le Corbusier.

When I studied architecture for a year, many of the early design exercises were tracing of non-rational cities like Rome and the multiple grids of San Francisco and collections of buildings like the Vatican that grew up over time as a way for us to consider the relationship between spaces that are beautiful and offer surprise and chance. For many architects, trained by rationalist modernists, constrained by rationalist moneylenders and developers — I don’t think that these ideas move beyond the entry level of architecture programs.

Note that the code for Seaside, FL, the prototypical new urbanist resort, had a code that fit on one page. New urbanist codes and form based codes are simpler, shorter, and easier to understand than conventional codes, in nearly every case.

LEED rating systems tend towards complexity, and are time consuming and costly to administer and comply with. However, revisions are coming soon that will simplify the certification process. Furthermore, there are many evaluation systems that are far simpler than LEED. See the EPA’s compilations of smart growth scorecards for examples: http://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/scorecards/

*Independent, as opposed to having a lot of their lives dictated to by govt housing, family social services, or other welfare agency.

Yes! The urban-versus-suburban living choice is heavily class-influenced. I recall reading somewhere that many cities—Washington especially—suffer from a cruel class paradox: the rich can afford to stay (private schools, pricey enclaves), the poor can’t afford to leave, and the middle class can only afford to leave (cheap, subsidized suburbs with good services). As a result, many American cities have glaring income canyons resulting from the vanishing middle class. For DC, in 1999 the average income for the wealthiest fifth of households was $186,830. For the poorest fifth of households, the number was $6,126.

Furthermore, why would people live in farther-out exurbs when closer-in suburbs offer the same level of “order” that Sennett believes primarily drives housing choices? The issue is economic and the exurban fringe is cheaper. Though you can compensate for the location compromise by praying for the serenity to deal with a monstrous commute, you can’t hope your way into the next income bracket so easily.