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New
Community Design to the Rescue: Fulfilling Another
American Dream
, argues that approximately one-third
of Americans have expressed preferences for living in
neighborhoods which are walkable, have a mixture of
uses, and provide alternatives to using the car for
every household trip. In other words, it acknowledges
that substantial numbers of Americans want to live in
communities that embody at least some Smart
Growth principles. The report goes on to note that
only 
1 percent
of housing in America offers such
convenience and sustainability (Hudnut, 2002).
Given these progressive sentiments, it is disap-
pointing that in many states the growth management
legislation that would bring about these more sus-
tainable urban patterns is weak. It is often well
intentioned but relatively toothless, and advisory
rather than regulatory. North Carolina, for example,
announced in 2000 an initiative to preserve one
million acres of natural open space in the state.
However, it provided no funds or mechanisms to
achieve this goal, leaving it up to the conscience of
private developers and landowners, and relying on
the inadequate powers and finances of nonprofit land
trusts or individual communities to do the job.
Indeed in America it’s often left to individual cities
or large metropolitan areas to enact their own growth
management legislation, and this often include
policies on urban design. Portland, Oregon, San
Diego, California, the twin cities of Minneapolis-
St. Paul in Minnesota, Denver, Colorado, Chattanooga,
Tennessee and Austin, Texas are notable examples.
These cities have created policies with good strategic
planning objectives that embody principles of Smart
Growth, and San Diego made a step forward in 1992
when it adopted exemplary design guidelines for
transit-oriented development (prepared by Calthorpe
Associates) that embody definitive New Urbanist
design principles. This example, usually for specific
kinds of development like TODs, has been followed
by several cities across the USA.
Atlanta, Georgia, is one such instance. The multi-
county Atlanta metropolitan area was forced into
regional planning and growth management by a
fiscal crisis caused by the poor quality of its air; it
was so polluted that the federal government cut off
road building funds under the provisions of the
Clean Air Act, a law dating from the presidency of
Richard Nixon. This legislation explicitly tied the
provision of funds to a city’s maintenance of decent
air quality. Stimulated by this threat to its economic
growth, Atlanta, with the backing of the state gover-
nor, took a more proactive position regarding
sustainable planning and urban design as a compo-
nent of revamped planning guidance. The coordi-
nating regional planning authority, the Atlanta
Regional Commission, developed a ‘Smart Growth
Toolkit’ which includes information of topics such
as transit-oriented development and traditional
neighborhood development. These documents, pre-
pared by one of the authors in conjunction with
the Atlanta planning firm of Jordan, Jones and
Goulding, feature specific urban design guidelines
and case studies and include model zoning
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CHAPTER FIVE
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GROWTH MANAGEMENT, DEVELOPMENT CONTROL AND URBAN DESIGN
101
ordinances for adoption by municipalities in the
region. However, the governor’s active support for
regional Smart Growth legislation did not serve
him well at the polls. In the 2002 election, he was
defeated by an opponent who has been markedly less
enthusiastic and supportive of these policies.
The most notable American successes of collabora-
tive planning and attention to design at this metro-
politan level are Portland and Minneapolis-St. Paul.
In the former, an ‘urban growth boundary’ approxi-
mates to an English ‘green belt’ of preserved rural
land around the urbanized area: a regional authority
guides planning decisions and the urban area is well
served by public transit. The regional model is more
advanced in the Twin Cities. Here a Metropolitan
Council has planning authority for sewer, transit and
land use over a seven-county area, and guides growth
in a more orderly and economical manner than if the
process was left to the normal conditions of market
forces and competitive municipalities. The state legis-
lature beefed up a conventional planning agency with
a budget of $40 million to a regional authority with
real power and an annual budget of $600 million
(Katz, 2003: p. 48). Most crucially, the Twin Cities
have a tax sharing arrangement, whereby 40 per cent
of the property tax revenues from commercial and
industrial development are distributed across the met-
ropolitan region. This goes a long way toward offset-
ting the competition for new development and its
tax revenues that motivates most conventional local
government in America.
Like British towns, individual cities in America
usually have some form of urban design guidelines,
either included within zoning legislation or as a free-
standing advisory document. Sometimes such poli-
cies and guidelines are progressive, and demonstrate a
deep care and concern for a city’s urban environment.
Other times they are nearly nonexistent, or honored
mainly in the breach. Mostly, they fall in between.
The city of Charlotte, for example, has in recent years
enacted design provisions that place emphasis on the
creation of a good pedestrian environment at street
level in the downtown core. Among other things,
these provisions require a certain amount of street-
level retail space to be provided in new downtown
development, and ban the construction of overstreet
walkways that link the internal environments of
office towers and deprive the street of much needed
activity. Despite these regulations, in 2001 the city
council approved a mid-air tunnel connecting the
city’s newest skyscraper to its neighbor with almost
no discussion of the consequences, and waived the
street level retail requirement in a nearby large
development by one of the city’s powerhouse banks.
Yet within a few blocks of these failures and oversights,
Charlotte has developed its exemplary HOPE VI
affordable housing project, embodying good urban
design principles and built with decent architecture,
following plans from outside consultants, Urban
Design Associates (UDA) from Pittsburgh, and local
architects FMK and David Furman (see Figure 2.14).
Often urban design quality is left to the develop-
ment industry to enact for its own market-driven
benefit. Sometimes the results are outstanding, such
as the Rouse Corporation’s reconstruction of the his-
toric Faneuil Hall and Quincy Marketplace in
Boston (see Figure 5.1). Other times the results fall
short of excellence but still attain a high standard,
such as the Birkdale Village development described
in the previous chapter. But usually the results are
disappointing, amounting to little more than frag-
ments of pedestrian space with benches and decora-
tive lighting between retail stores surrounded by huge
asphalt car parks (see Figure 5.2). In cases like this,
urban design is a mere fig leaf decorating the naked-
ness of the development team’s imagination.