My comment on Finding fault with the Smart Growth Manual
We must be reading different chapters. :) The section you reference is "Urban Triage." It clearly states that "Even the best neighborhoods" (italics added, such snobby language? -- David's note) "must accomodate elements that are intrinsically hostile to pedestrian life. Among these are drive-throughs, gas stations, blank walls, and car lots, all of which should be located in districts beyond the neighborhood edge."
How much clearer can it be? The authors state that bad things should be in someone else's neighborhood, if you can get away with it to a greenfield New Urbanist (where's the TMsymbol?) development.
It is only in rehab, where you must stay, then you develop an A-B street network, where A is ped oriented and B for all the bad but necessary stuff. That makes sense and is somewhat like the actual response in cities, though the authors suggest using a more-sophisticated method.
My point stands -- the authors call to segregate undesirable uses if you can and place them "in districts beyond the neighborhood edge." That's what the words say. I didn't make up the phrase "...drive-throughs, gas stations, blank walls, and car lots, all of which should belocated in districts beyond the neighborhood edge."
The book is seriously flawed and if there is demand for such a book to place new urbanism as the core of smart growth -- which is btw a very fair claim -- then the book should be redone.
And as I wrote privately, I will be happy to help Duany, Speck and Lydon in the revision of a second edition. The book has good bones but the authors must insert some rigor and retraint. If they wish to add more speculative ideas -- e.g. that "long-distance food sourcing will become increasingly untenable" -- then such ideas should be clearly marked as "speculative" and not a part of settled wisdom. And I do want to specifically highlight that point. Placing peak oil as the driver (no pun) of smart growth (a term I actually detest with it implied de haut en bas) is both intellectually arguable and bad politics.
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