Healthy Cities Healthy Economy

The Congress for New Urbanism, commissioned by a group called CEOs for Cities, released the results of a study on how New Urbanist growth strategies pays off economic dividends.  If you watch the video, try your best to ignore the awful music, they apparently spent all their money on the research itself. 

The study found that the recent push for growth into rural areas has had disastrous results which we've explored here and here.  Perhaps most importantly, it finds that returning to development in cities over exurbs, is the key ingredient to solving any number of our nation's most pressing problems.   Haven't we all been searching for a silver bullet for climate change, lack of affordable housing, obesity, and excessive personal and public debt?

The study found that:

• Metropolitan areas with a strong urban core had more stable home values than suburbs and exurbs. 
• Reducing vehicle miles traveled per person by just one mile in the 51 largest cities in the US, would save $29 Billion ANNUALLY.
• The higher the "Walkscore" the higher the home value demonstrating that people prefer to live close to stuff, not far away from it as planners have been trying to do since the 70's.  Walkscore is a complicated algorithm developed by NASA or some other bunch of eggheads that scores how easy it is to walk from one's home to bars, grocery stores, bars, doctors office, bars, restaurants, bars, etc.

So how to get from here to there?  Instead of attempting to separate uses, we should be encouraging them to mingle.  How crazy is it that half our population has to get into half ton of steel to pick up milk and diapers at the store?  Regulating intensity of use is the way to restore some sanity to urban planning. 

"Smartcode", an open source municipal code created by Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company is an attempt to establish exactly this model.  It divides development intensity appropriate for each area into "transects."  Transects range from natural zones intended to be preserved, to downtown cores with every imaginable density in between.  Ideally, it would create a zoning map that radiates outward from a downtown core much like a dart board.  Typically, a city might have one downtown core, but several urban centers where much density would be focused.  Planners would then focus transit infrastructure to these areas rather than trying to react strictly to demand.

It can work and there's never been a time more obvious to do it.