"Centers and
Environs"
- Back to the Future?
Many Americans feel nostalgic
about
a past when there was 
countryside between the cities, towns and villages.
Following
the ideas of New Urbanism planning theorists,(2)
the New Jersey State
Planning
Commission wants New Jersey townships to divide their land between
"centers" and "environs". Proponents of this model, including
groups
such as New Jersey Future,
often feel they are fighting a losing battle as more and more of New
Jersey's
countryside "succumbs" to development. Like other Americans,
South
Jerseyans are jealous of their freedom to build and settle where they
please,
and automobiles have given them the freedom to spread throughout the
countryside.
For much of South Jersey, implementing this vision would mean rolling
back
the clock. But some of this nostalgic landscape might be
preserved
in areas that have had less growth in the last decades, especially in
Salem
and Cumberland counties.
"Broadacre
City" -
A
Better Vision of Suburbia?
Broadacre
City was Frank Lloyd Wright's vision of a decentralized, yet urban
America. 
Wright anticipated America's love affair with the automobile and
suburbia,
and argued that strong architectural and land use controls could make
the
best of it. Other visionaries who promoted similar views included
landscape architect Frederick
Law Olmstead, home designer Gustav Stickley and the Craftsman
movement,
sometimes known as the Bungalow or Arts
and Crafts Style. These visionaries designed homes and
communities
that enhanced the natural environment. They often preferred to
build
in attractive, natural areas far from cities. Critics say
that
contemporary suburbia is a "bastardized" version of Wright's ideas and
related "Garden
City" ideas.3
Continue
Return
to previous slide.
1. The skeptical quote about the
anti-sprawl
ideology is from Greg Easterbrook, "Surburan
Myth," The New Republic, March 15, 1999, p. 20.
2. For an up-to-date presentation
of New
Urbanist ideas on regional planning, see Peter Calthorpe and William
Fulton's
book,
The
Regional City (reviewed in the N.Y.
Times Book Review). For a sobering discussion of how these ideas
have
worked out in practice, see Jane Shaw and Ronald Utt, eds., book A
Guide to Smart Growth. For an argument that "evidence on
suburbanization
and low-density development suggests suburbanization does not
significantly
threaten the quality of life for most people, and land development can
be managed more effectively through real-estate markets than
comprehensive
land-use planning," see The
Sprawling
of America: In Defense of the Dynamic City, available free online.
3. Calthorpe and Fulton, op cit., say
"the template
that underlies much of our suburban growth waw designed in the thirties
by Frank Lloyd Wright with his Broadacre Cities plans and Clarence
Stein's Greenbelt towns." p. 44.
The word "sprawl" implies ungainly, awkward, straggling disarray
... "the straggling expansion of an urban or industrial
area
into the surrounding countryside" (OED). Opponents
of sprawl advocate "smart
growth" (as opposed to the "dumb growth" we have now) and promise
to
save the environment and improve our communities. They often cite
Portland, Oregon as a model, largely because it has an Urban
Growth Boundary. Critics call "so
called smart-growth an elitist assault on the American dream."
They argue that "sprawl is caused by affluence and population growth,
and
which of these, exactly, do we propose to prohibit?"(1)
For better or worse, as one of America's most affluent and densely
populated
states, New Jersey is already
far
along this road.