These people claim well designed communities increase crime

[Zuni]

http://www.reason.com/0502/fe.st.crime.shtml---is a terrible article

If anyone is familiar with New Urbanist design, it is a turning point for American communities. It will stop sprawl and create much more livable and pleasant communities. New Urbanist design is where a community is built like a village, with real community feel. All roads have sidewalks. All houses have porches that open right onto the sidewalks. In the town center, shops and resturaunts are topped with loft apartments. The whole community is walkable, designed for pedestrians not cars. Cars are hidden in yje space inside the block, behind the houses where they do not get in the way.

New Urbanist planning does not create more crime---this author uses studies based in inner city slums in Baltimore and Philadelphia as 'evidence'
Furthermore, New Urbanist designers are against Wal-Mart and other big box retailers for creating sprawl and destroying communities
That might be part of the motive for attack from these so called 'libertarians'

The suburb is on the way out. More and more you will see urban 'villages' instead of ugly, wasteful suburbs. These urban communities are the hottest thing going and are catching on like wildfire, especially among young progressives. It is ugly, causes pollution, destroys wilderness and hurts small business

This new urbanist movement is made to create urban communities with community values, locally owned shops, walkable distances, less pollution and more conservation of land

I find it interesting that Freepers oppose New Urbanism---is it because suburbs which destroy communities and lead to lack of contact with the community create the social conditions for Republican 'values' to breed?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1340326/posts

I welcome your thoughts

[Squeech]

1. Hmmm...

It's probably simpler. (Consider Occam's Razor, which can also be stated as "Never blame malice where stupidity will serve.")

Bulldozing a tract of unimproved land, staking out a well-used blueprint, and building cheap, tacky houses has been profitable for two generations now, and it's wicked easy. Why waste extra effort on design, planning, foresight? Besides, you're making the status quo look bad.

[Zuni]

2. The status quo is changing

These new urban communities will be the norm in 10-20 yrs. Suburbs, strip malls and wal marts are becoming less and less popular and these new urban communities are popping up everywhere.
When one is planned, the demand is enormous---they sell out very quickly
I just noticed a small Urban village---offices, shops and condos is being built in Annapolis as we speak.

[kick-ass-bob]

3. We have at least one or two of those starting up here in Raleigh

The owners took down the oldest enclosed mall between DC and Atlanta to make one of these.
We'll see how it goes - it looks really nice so far.

[Zuni]

6. Glad to hear it

I have become a convert to this style. One of the biggest problems in the US is endless sprawl---I have lived my whole life in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area, and has become an endless sea of development. I have always hated suburbs--tract houses, strip malls, highways, oceans of cars, wal-marts, parking lots
I lived in downtown annapolis for many years---which is a small community with a commercial center and mixed income housing (and mixed housing with apartments, townhouses and single family homes). There are many locally owned stores and resturaunts, bars and clubs. It is far preferable to living in some bland, colorless tract community.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

4. They sound very nice...

but what are the stats on decreasing suburben use, and decreasing wal-mart use? I know nothing about either, but you seem pretty informed. Just to me it seems we're headed in the wrong direction. 10 years seems a little too optimistic.

We've got something KIND of like that, but instead of being surrounded by nice homes, it is surrounded by Mc Mansions. And the loft spaces are taken up by businesses instead of apartment space. It looks beautiful though.

[UdoKier]

5. I totally agree with your take.

I live in SF, a city mostly built in the style that the new urbanists are basically trying to emulate. Pedestrian-friendly, small yards, mostly 3-story houses and 5-7 story apartment buildings with small yards and small footprints, most neighborhoods have shopping in walking distance. And the crime in San Francisco is MUCH lower than it is in suburban-sprawl cities like Dallas, Miami, Houston, Atlanta, or even LA.

The notion that the new urbanist model breeds crime is pure propaganda being bolstered by a few anecdotes. I personally feel much safer walking the streets here than in some suburb. There are always plenty of people around and that makes me feel safer. In the burbs, if someone attacks you and you scream, will anyone even hear? Will they emerge from their gated, alarmed McMansion to help? Doubtful.

I know there are a significant number of DUers still addicted to the fantasy of a suburb as some sort of bucolic paradise, but they are not, and they most certainly are not sustainable economically or ecologically.

[Withywindle]

7. I agree, and...

...what I couldn't get used to for a long time when I first moved to Chicago, after living for a while in NYC, was how low-density and "deserted" it seemed. This creeped me out, for the very reasons you mention. If I have to walk somewhere at night by myself I always pay attention to where there are open stores or bars I could run to, clusters of people hanging out who might be deterring "witnesses", etc.

Call me strange, but I feel a lot safer if the neighbor families are hanging out on the stoop being sociable on the summer nights.


And I grew up rural, but that's a totally different social context. Trying to recreate that "solitude" in places where there actually are lots of people, they're just hiding inside watching TV, raises my danger signals in a different way that's hard to explain.

[Zuni]

8. You are absolutely right

the statistics in this paper were taken from areas in Baltimore and Philadelphia, two cities with high crime rates.

San Francisco is one of the best planned cities in the US. very dense, but not suffocating like NY can be. It is also very pleasing to the eye. The buildings are the perfect size, and there is a good mix of types of housing. The only bad thing is the earthquakes.

Some of the nicest, safest areas in the country are inner city areas.

[dean_dem]

9. I think they're right up to a point...

I subscribe to Reason and remember reading the article a while back. They are right in that the less "defensible space" people have, the less invested they are in maintaining it, and keeping it safe. Just come to my neighborhood and look at some of the college apartments if you want proof of that. But they seem too quick to say "Well, it doesn't work 100 percent of the time, so New Urbanism is a bad idea." That's just unfair.

For starters, they're confusing the normal elements to be expected of an urban area with the effects of New Urbanist planning. No matter how you design it, an area with higher population density is going to bring with it more crime, more traffic, and more congestion. Now, you can either minimize those problems by incorporating New Urbanist elements such as common space, sidewalks and trails to encourage a sense of community and alternatives to the automobile, or you can just do what we've been doing for decades, which is retreat into our heavily seperated suburban enclaves and to hell with our cities. We know how well that has worked.

I don't think New Urbanism works for every area, and sometimes things like cul-de-sacs and seperation of land use are more appropriate. But as is usually the case with Reason looking to be anti-status quo, they only look at it as an either-or situation.

[Zuni]

10. Good points

I know what you mean about College apartments---I lived in a real shithole one when I was in school

I understand New Urbanism is not going to solve all of our problems, but suburbs are so wasteful, so soulless. I lived in the 'burbs till I was about 14, then my family moved into Annapolis, into a large house on a small lot in the historic part of town, real close to the state house and Naval Academy. I could walk to virtually anything I needed---everything from groceries to bars were right around the corner. The old parts of the city of Annapolis are very similar to these new urbanist communities. I never had any problems with crime, even with housing projects only a few blocks away. Living in Annapolis is great, and I got my own apartment here after I finished school.

[UdoKier]

11. Well...

" No matter how you design it, an area with higher population density is going to bring with it more crime, more traffic, and more congestion."

I don't think that's really true. PER CAPITA crime rates are actually lower in many high-density cities than they are in many low-density suburbs. As I mentioned before, the per capita crime rates in Dallas are much higher than in SF. Of course a city of 1 million like SF will have more overall crimes than a town with only 162,000 like Ft. Lauderdale, FL.


Crimes per 100K.....Natl. average......San Francisco, CA.......Fort Lauderdale, FL

Population..................114,967.............763,146.....................162,900

Violent crimes.............506.1................851.6..........................1,081.6

Property crimes...........3,617.9.............4,674.8.......................6,764.9

Murder.........................5.5....................7.7.............................8.0

Forcible rape................32.0..................30.0...........................40.5

Robbery.......................144.9................452.9.........................466.5

Aggravated assault.......323.6................361.0.........................566.6

Burglary........................728.4................746.3........................1,386.7

Larceny-theft................2,475.3..............3,199.5.....................4,520.0

Motor vehicle theft.........414.2................729.0.......................858.2


Not to bash Ft. Lauderdale. It's a relatively nice, relatively upscale, suburban-sprawl model midsized city, and you can see clearly that in all areas, the crime rate is higher there than in diverse, high-density, full-of-mass-transit San Francisco.

Source:

http://www.bestplaces.net/html/crimecompare3.asp?lcity=8483&rcity=8700&view=T

[dean_dem]

12. I was really just speaking generally....

A city will typically have a higher crime rate and higher congestion than say, a farm town. San Francisco is a big exception (having one of the highest per capita income of all cities in the country would be a good indicator), but generally the rule is that more people bring more of these problems with them. But if you live in an urban area, you have to accept these problems to some degree, and figure ways they can be minimized.

[UdoKier]

15. Very few people live in farm towns anymore.

Almost all people live in suburbs or cities, and the pattern repeats, it's not just SF. NYC, Philadelphia, Boston - tons of high-density cities have better crime rates than suburban sprawl cities, particularly the ones in the south, and crime in western sprawl-cities like Phoenix and Albuquerque is shooting up too.

Not to mention the fact that a lot of these older cities have better parks, schools, cultural and civic institutions than most suburbs.

BTW, I know you're not bashing cities here - but a lot of people do, and seem to be very ignorant of the fact that many very attractive-looking suburbs are actually hotbeds of crime.

[dean_dem]

16. It could apply to any lower density area...

I don't have the figures in front of me, but I'm pretty sure Philadelphia and Boston, and probably NYC all have higher crime rates in the central city than in the outlying suburbs. Western cities are pretty difficult to gauge because the central cities themselve are pretty decentralized, you might be right about that. But I definitely wasn't implying that density alone determines crime, I was just saying it was a major part of it. And I'm not looking to bash cities, I was really just saying that there are certain things you have to expect when living in an urban area, crime was only one element- there's also the congestion, noise, etc. Good Planning however can help minimize these problems.

I live in a city now, and while there are problems, suburbia has its own set of problems that I don't want to deal with. That's the point I was trying to make, and I think we're agreeing here. Those very attractive-looking suburbs have their own set of disadvantages that people seem to ignore.

[UdoKier]

13. And here you can compare...

The supposed "crime-ridden ghetto" of Oakland to the pride of Texas, Dallas.

http://www.bestplaces.net/html/crimecompare3.asp?lcity=8420&rcity=10471&view=T


Dallas is worse in almost EVERY category.

I get so sick of California being bashed about stuff like that. Why is Oakland synonymous with crime and not Dallas? Makes no sense to me...

[loudestchick]

14. I live in an area of Kansas City, Missouri called "Brookside". It was

a planned neighborhood in the 20's. There is a shopping area w/ a neighborhood school and 2 apartment communities surrounded by about 20 blocks radial of single family housing. Most of us have porches. The original intent for this neighborhood was that it be connected to the major downtown via trolley. However, the trolley was dismantled in the 70's. As of about 5 yrs ago the land that had been occupied w/ trolley track now supports a very nice walking and cycling trail. We also have 3 excellent neighborhood parks, including unlighted tennis courts. I can't imagine living anywhere else.

The neighborhood is also w/in close proximity to a hospital, 2 universities.

[dean_dem]

17. Hey, I've heard of that place.

Saw an Urban Land Institute film about it when it had just been built. Glad to see it was a successful neighborhood, it looked like a very nice place to live.

[loudestchick]

18. It's so wonderful...I started a thread to allow people to wax poetic about

where they live too.