Steve Mouzon

Good luck, Nick! I’m extremely high on the SmartCode for many reasons. It really is the biggest revolution in coding since the Euclidean code. FWIW, I developed the Sky Method as a highly incremental development mechanism that bypasses the broken American development financing system by developing in tiny nibbles, not broad strokes. Check it out…[Read more]

Jason, it’s most predictable at either extreme. At one end is the suburban pad site, not walkably connected to anything. We can accurately predict the maximum number of building occupants and the cars it will take to get them there. At the other end is a highly mixed-use, compact, and walkable neighborhood where there are many things to walk to…[Read more]

Thanks, Nick! I’d love to hear what you think once you’ve seen it!

FWIW, this was Galina Tachieva’s submission to ReBurbia. She’s writing a book, which should be released shortly… it’s the Sprawl Repair Manual. As for the parking, what we’ve seen repeatedly is that the parking requirements go down for places that are mixed-use. A few people (like me) actually walk to work, so I don’t need two parking spaces…[Read more]

Thanks, Boilerplate! Since you mentioned it, I’m starting to build an online photo database at http://samouzon.zenfolio.com/

Trace One, I’m not disparaging growth limits… what I’m saying is that growth limits alone don’t do the job, because what gets built within the limits is the same old crap (see Portland.) The ideal situation is one where…[Read more]

I completely agree with this, Nick. Many solutions for many places. It’s just that if we can develop a framework upon which to hang most or all of the ideas, it’s more efficient for sustainability and urbanism newcomers if they don’t have to look all over the place for useful ideas.

With that having been said, those of us in the first generation…[Read more]

Nick,

I’m a huge fan of ruffling feathers, as you might have noticed. Without that, the default setting is complacency. But trust me… Duany’s complaint isn’t the LA discipline, but rather the confusion of the urban and the rural. As for the “too much of one thing is not good” idea, I completely agree. NU circa 1995 was all about one setting:…[Read more]

Trace One, you’ve GOTTA be kidding!!! Go to Portland, which has the most famous urban growth boundaries, and look at the new development within those boundaries. I’ve driven there for many miles, and never found a single place amongst the new (post-UGB) developments that wasn’t built according to the same crappy standards as sprawl. NU, OTOH,…[Read more]

Nick, there are many NU infill projects… they just don’t get the press the greenfields do because infill projects have to address so many existing conditions that they’re necessarily less iconic in almost all cases. But if you count the total number of NU projects, a shockingly high number are infill.

Today is a makeshift solution. Tomorrow is better. Here’s what I mean by that: today (or at least until the meltdown) there was gonna be development on the perimeter no matter what. It’s far better, IMO, to do it in a way that sets the stage for a lower-energy future where you can’t drive everywhere than to do it in standard sprawl pattern so you…[Read more]

Celebration is a mistake NU had to make to realize how bad it was. We try lots of stuff. Things that work, we incorporate. Things that don’t, we discard. But you gotta try it to find out for sure. Celebration got stuff famously wrong in well-executed fashion. Stapleton had good intentions, but bad execution. There’s far better stuff than either of…[Read more]

See below. Not true. Not only is his own brother a landscape architect, but his Charlotte office is putting out some really cool stuff in their Light Imprint initiative that every LA needs to take a look at, IMO: http://bit.ly/8XFflP

Part of the problem of affordability is the lack of real diversity of unit types and sizes. I laid out the principles of Katrina Cottages on the Saturday after the hurricane with Duany, and the biggest impediment we’ve had to date has been based purely on their square footage. I live in a 747 square foot condo on South Beach. A house that size…[Read more]

Several responses:

“I think the planning priciples of NU are generally good ideas as ONE answer to suburban sprawl”

What other answers are there that have moved beyond theory to having been proven in practice? Not saying there aren’t any; I’m just not aware of them.

“As far as people driving to shop and dine in a nu community- I dont think that…[Read more]

First, you oughta ask IF we hate New Urbanism, not WHY. And your news on Duany is erroneous. His brother Douglas is a landscape architect, and they get along quite famously. It was Douglas, as a matter of fact, that sparked Andrés’ conception of the Transect. His objection isn’t landscape architecture in general, but rather the attempt to turn…[Read more]