They're Afraid, They're Very Afraid

Those poor new urbanists. To witness the drubbing they're taking from some of their critics, you'd think this movement of neo-traditional architects and planners was peddling crack to babies.

- Whitney Gould, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“We know how to make a city. So go home, CNU.”

And Kroloff was just warming up. “Why do they even exist?” he demanded.

- Tulane Univ. Dean of Architecture

THE ARCHITECTURAL ESTABLISHMENT is afraid they're losing their power. Trained to be ideological Modernists, they've had everything their way for fifty years. Their wishes overlapped with the cultures of the political and cultural establishments, and so important commissions, control of education and the support of the media all went the way they wanted.

That's changing. Institutions like Princeton and the University of Virginia which for decades have built only Modernist buildings are building traditional buildings again, and architecture schools are fighting back with ridiculous and anti-liberal demands that their schools ban traditional design. Governments here and abroad continue to blame Modernist utopian visions for social problems like the riots in France, and they are tearing down award-winning housing projects and replacing them with mixed-use, mixed-income, walkable neighborhoods that respect their surroundings.

Most recently, the New Urbanists have been called in by Mississippi and Louisiana to cope with the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. That's brought on some strong attacks from the more ideological Modernists.

It's important to make some qualifications here. First, we have to distinguish between traditional urban design and traditional architectural design. All New Urbanists follow many of the principles of traditional urbanism, but a good number of New Urban architects are Modernists when it comes to building design. Ideological Modernists are unable to make that distinction, however, because they see all design as heroic Modernist invention in the tradition of Howard Roark.

Second, the national leaders of the American Institute of Architects support many New Urban principles, but the local chapters of the AIA often fight New Urbanism. After 911, the New York Chapter of the AIA made sure no New Urbanists were allowed in the Ground Zero competition. In New Orleans, one of the most influential leaders of the local chapter of the AIA, who has no urban design experience, fights to keep the New Urbanists out of New Orleans, so that her office can do the work.

The Dean of the Architecture School at New Orleans' Tulane University, Reed Kroloff, also fights against the New Urbanists coming to New Orleans.  He is an educator and former journalist who was almost the Director of Design at the National Endowment for the Arts, until he lost the position to a New Urbanist.  He could not design a good neighborhood, town or city if his life depended on it. But that doesn't stop him from telling everyone what to do. Look at this interview with Kroloff:

"It's a one-size-fits-all approach to city design," Reed Kroloff, dean of the architecture school at Tulane University in New Orleans, told me in a phone interview. "Every city doesn't have to look like your grandmother's hometown. Where you have towns that were all but wiped away (by Hurricane Katrina), there's absolutely no reason to re-create the past. And in a city like New Orleans, where the patterns are already established, we don't need CNU to tell us how to rebuild. We know how to make a city. So go home, CNU."

And Kroloff was just warming up. "Why do they even exist?" he demanded.

Other avantgardists and academics have tried to paint the New Urbanists as racists and genocidalist lackeys of capitalist pigs. None of them went to the charrette, but they know that at the invitation of the governor, the New Urban marines are massing on the edge of New Orleans. And they know they're incapable of mounting a response like the Mississippi charrette: architecture schools and the avantgarde design exquisite objects for rich patrons and have no experience or tools above the scale of the building. On top of that, they know the demand for their services is small once one gets away from wealthy patrons and yuppies on the coasts (Full Disclosure: I'm a born and bred Easterner, educated in the Ivy League, who has visited more than half of Le Corbusier's buildings – my problem is not with Modernism but with ideological, exclusive Modernism and avantgardism). They hate seeing responses like this one from New Orleans or this one from Mississippi.

It's time for the avantgardists to put up or shut up, and either stop criticizing or get involved and show what they have to offer. If Reed Kroloff were to show pictures of what he thinks should be done when he talks about what shouldn't be done (New Urbanism), most of the residents of Mississippi and Louisiana would reject his ideas out of hand.* But the political leaders of one of the eleven cities and towns involved in the Mississippi charrette, Biloxi, seem to have decided that it will choose waterfront casinos and high-rise condos over the traditional urbanism offered by the charrette. Why not bring Kroloff and his crew to Biloxi to show the world what they can do?

Undoubtedly, Kroloff would get prominent Modernists to volunteer for such a visible cause. The citizens of Biloxi might reject their plans, but already some of the residents have shown they might prefer to sell their land to the casinos to the alternative of battling the uncertain FEMA process ahead of them. That seems to be what the politicians want. If so, let's see the different practices and theories produce.

* The logical question, therefore, is why he's Dean of Tulane, but that's another story.