Design First Walters fm qxd 2/26/04 7: 50 pm page I

THE URBAN FUTURE
The title of this chapter begs the question: what, pre-
cisely, constitutes the ‘real world’? What kinds of
cities are urban designers and planners going to be
working in during the early decades of the twenty-
first century? What are the realities of planning and
development likely to be? What future forms are
cities going to take? And what cultural forces are
likely to shape them? We have discussed highlights
from the history of Anglo-American urbanism, and
these provide some clues. We have examined the rela-
tionships between center city and suburb, and con-
sidered some of the most important cultural forces at
work. We have charted the (d)evolution of the urban
periphery from suburbs to sprawl, and considered
some of the environmental and economic issues
acting in this process. We have also examined some
crucial differences between American, British and
continental European policies regarding the control
6
Urban design in the real world
Walters_06.qxd 2/26/04 7:24 PM Page 121

---

DESIGN FIRST: DESIGN-BASED PLANNING FOR COMMUNITIES
122
of development and the management of growth. In
considering some of the likely future circumstances
that will shape the city for the next generation, and
create the context within which urban designers,
architects and planners will work, we will concentrate
mostly on American urban futures, as frankly, the sit-
uation seems more urgent here. However, several
conditions have structural similarities with British
problems, and some proposed solutions use urban
forms and typologies common to both cultures, so
we hope some of the observations can provide a com-
mentary on British circumstances.
We have seen that many aspects of American sys-
tems of planning and land development are con-
strained by conservative practices and attitudes that
are resistant to change. One of the main problems
with advancing the practice of community design is
that many current development practices are based
on repeating formulas that worked in the past with
little thought for future changes in circumstances. It’s
not just developers and lenders who march into the
future looking backward. Many planners and
transportation engineers have grown comfortable
administering regulations and standards that were
established decades ago for a different world. Without
minimizing these obstacles, we consciously base our
thoughts about future planning and development on
changes that might realistically be achieved in the
next decades rather than circumstances that pertain
today.
The crucial areas of concern that most people
acknowledge – for both American and European
cities – are revitalizing the center city and controlling
sprawl around the urban periphery. We have seen ear-
lier in this book that many urban ambitions and
design concepts common in British and European
cities are embedded in American Smart Growth poli-
cies and embraced by the professionals who espouse
those policies. But the critical difference between the
two continents is that European nations have, how-
ever imperfect, national systems for addressing these
questions through government policies and regula-
tions on growth management, urban design and sus-
tainability. Moreover, most of these countries enjoy
the benefits of proactive and legally enforceable
public planning procedures at regional and national
scales.
When we’ve made comparisons like this elsewhere
in the book, we’ve imagined a variety of ribald and
derisory comments from our British and European
colleagues. Many of them will stand in line to
recount the failings of their particular system. But the
crucial weakness that bedevils American planning
and the quest for sustainable urban development is
the lack of a system for dealing with these issues in
any comprehensive manner. America presently lacks
the political frameworks to enact the kinds of growth
management policies common in Europe. There is
insufficient public acceptance of the concepts of
Smart Growth and little effective leadership to cham-
pion these issues at the various levels of government.
(At the time of writing, North Carolina is proposing
to weaken its environmental management legislation.)
And as we discussed in Chapter 3, increasingly well-
organized ideological opposition to the whole notion
of Smart Growth has been developed by right-wing
groups within American politics.
A series about the burdens of urban expansion in
North Carolina in