Big Cities Big Suburbia? Neither. Dispersed Small Cities Across Regions Are Preferable

Urban Legends - By Joel Kotkin | Foreign Policy: "Ultimately, dispersion -- both city to suburb and megacity to small city -- holds out some intriguing solutions to current urban problems. The idea took hold during the initial golden age of industrial growth -- the English 19th century -- when suburban 'garden cities' were established around London's borders. The great early 20th-century visionary Ebenezer Howard saw this as a means to create a 'new civilization' superior to the crowded, dirty, and congested cities of his day. It was an ideal that attracted a wide range of thinkers, including Friedrich Engels and H.G. Wells."

Dispersed small cities is the real meat of this salient article in Foreign Policy. Joel Kotkin sees that sane planning for the future worldwide should move toward small cities distributed in some proximity across a region.

The big city provides unrelieved sameness and congestion that has fewer and fewer compensations in terms of lively culture and exciting public spaces.

Endless suburban development is less and less viable at a time when the cost of homes and cars move beyond the reach of many. Behind metrosprawl stands the oil economy and reliance on the private automobile. These are two things the future must move beyond.

New or redeveloped small cities can experiment with a radical reduction in automobile use, concentrate economic, health and educational opportunities close to where people live and articulate new cultural options that have the potential of gaining a lively local audience.

It is good to see someone thinking about the future past the tired choice of mega-city versus mega-suburbia.

Abba's Way. Beyond Green. "Big Cities or Big Suburbia? Neither. Dispersed Small Cities Across Regions."