07 April, 2012

A plea for beauty: a manifesto for a new urbanism - Society and Culture - AEI

A plea for beauty: a manifesto for a new urbanism - Society and Culture - AEI: Planning: Solution or Problem?

The first response of many Americans is that central planning is not the solution but part of the problem. The housing projects of the 1950s and ’60s, in which attractive and settled neighborhoods were bulldozed and replaced by municipal housing that nobody wanted to live in, were the result of planning, as were the thruways and expressways that deprived city centers of their dignity and allure. Those projects had disastrous social consequences: a demoralized workforce frozen in places where jobs were no longer available, unvisited city centers, crime-ridden neighborhoods, and vandalizing of public space. But the principal lesson was not learned: that plans have unintended consequences that accumulate over a far longer period, ultimately outweighing the short-term benefits.