The New SimCity Baffles Urban Planners

In a fascinating experiment, Fast Company brought in teams of urban planners to tackle the new SimCity. All were supporters of New Urbanism, an urban design movement that focuses on sustainability, walkability, mixed-use developments, and connectivity.

The results were disastrous. Although the planing teams began with the best of intentions, they instead ended up with coal-fueled cities, sprawling suburbs, high taxes, and casinos.

Part of the problem was that the planners--just like real-life city governments--fell prey to short term thinking when the financial incentives for "bad" planning behavior were simply to appealing to ignore. But the larger problem was thinking that every element of city life can be controlled from the top.

Says Fast Company's John McDermott:

The game’s beauty lies in the fact that--like in real life--creating a “perfect” city is impossible. What makes cities great, rather, are their imperfections. By placing millions of error-prone humans within a limited vicinity, cities constantly force their inhabitants to bump into one another physically, mentally, and emotionally. A truly great city isn’t governed by an algorithm, it’s one that routinely delivers the unpredictable.

Tea Party v. Smart Growth

I just read an absolutely fascinating article by Anthony Flint in The Atlantic Cities about how Tea Party Activists, in the name of aggressively smaller government, are working to undermine long held smart growth principles.

Flint describes the scene:

Across the country, Tea Party activists have been storming planning meetings of all kinds, opposing various plans by local and regional government having anything to do with density, smart growth, sustainability or urbanism.

In California,Tea Partiers collected enough signatures to place a repeal of the state's baseline environmental regulations on the ballot. Activists in Florida successfully upended the state's growth management legislation. In Virginia, they're are working against a much needed, 5-year comprehensive plan.

He continues:

What’s prompting the ire is anything from a proposed master plan to a new water treatment plant, rules governing septic tanks, or a bike-sharing program. What’s driving the rebellion is a view that government should have no role in planning or shaping the built environment that in any way interferes with private property rights.

According to the Gainesville Tea Party:

 Radical environmentalists, local business groups, and the ever-present Not in My Backyard crowd have been trying for decades to reshape American communities to conform to their preferred “smart growth” policies. These advocates work to impose land use regulations that would force Americans into denser living arrangements, curtail freedom of choice in housing, discriminate against lower-income Americans, and compel people to pay more for their houses and give up their cars in favor of subways, trolleys, buses, and bicycles.

I find it fascinating that the things I think are pre-requisites for strong downtowns--high density housing, public transportation, and even bike lanes--are viewed, not just with derision, but as some sort of communist plot against suburbia.