[Barry Watkins]

I don’t think Rybczynski is saying “government bad”, but that the ideal is acheived when the free market is freed up by government. I think we need to be cautious at every turn when we’re talking about the future of our cities being directed by a central national (US) government agency. Local control is imperitive and local designers need to be able to design in context. Nobody at the national level is saying otherwise as far as I know, but citizens need to be involved in this process. The SmartCode is indeed a great model code. It is made to be locally calibrated, but also gives a great basic framework for designing with Smart Growth principals.

[Barry Watkins]

Rybczynski’s comments are great arguments for code reform. Government should set the pace via coding that allows for developers to fill in the details via small incremental changes over time. Centralized control and big government projects are something Americans decry and for good reason. To be responsible citizens we ought to be designing places with SmartGrowth in mind, but at the same time the design has to respond to local context and should be locally generated and controlled.

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