Our Manifesto | The Outlaw Urbanist

We are radical traditional urbanists on a mission to expose the heathens who are destroying our cities. Our purpose is to radicalize anew the debate about the future of our cities. Our goal is to utterly eradicate the intellectual fallacy of the tired paradigms seizing our urban design and planning, real estate development, engineering, and architectural professionals since the early-to-mid 20th century. The catastrophic consequences of these paradigms are evident: more than a century of suburban sprawl, economic failures, social isolation, and urban dysfunction. They are failed paradigms, dinosaurs that do not recognize or will not acknowledge their own extinction.

We are outlaws. Over the last century, the entire apparatus of the ‘militant, anti-urban complex’ have conspired to make traditional urbanism a crime in the United States and other parts of the world. Federal, State and local planning and development policies, laws and regulations – aided and abetted by the self-serving dogma of professional organizations such as the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials and the American Planning Association and advocacy groups promoting a radical environmentalism – have conspired to make us outlaws. However, we refuse to serve time in their prison of suburbs now littering the landscape. Our doctrine is suburban disobedience.

The emergence of The New Urbanism in the early 1980s — and the later founding of the Congress for New Urbanism in 1992 — changed the debate about how to best design and build our cities of to-morrow. At the same time, the hard science of cities has time and time again issued findings that unquestionably prove the economic and social benefits of traditional urban models of living, working, and playing. This had led to a perceptible shift over the last three decades. However, it is not enough. We need revolution, not evolution. We need concerted action to overthrow the institutional inertia of our businesses, governments, and professions, which continue to drag our cities down a cul-de-sac, despite the best efforts – sometimes misguided – of many people. Like all cul-de-sacs, that path leads nowhere. Governments continue to enforce and tweak – rather entirely discard – zoning and environmental regulations that are the principal source for our suburban sprawl nightmare. Corporations continue to ‘build to code’ and construct suburban sprawl at an alarming rate. Multiple generations have now been born, raised, and will die trapped within a suburban nightmare from which they cannot wake. We are all guilty for these circumstances. The right-wing NIMBYs who hide behind the walls of their gated communities are guilty (“I’ve got mine, Jack, so screw you”). The left-wing radical environmentalists who protect a puddle of mud after a light shower are guilty (“It’s land and it’s wet, so it’s a wetland”). Those who drive their car around for fifteen minutes looking for a more convenient parking space are guilty (“God gave me legs but I can’t walk”). Because we are all guilty, we are also all responsible for sweeping away the mess.

We are provocateurs. We do not believe in the status quo. Reform is not enough. We are agents of change. Our entire system of city building must be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. A city built on foundations of sand cannot stand. We will challenge the flawed assumptions of our leaders. We will support positions of the political left and political right in the United States and elsewhere in the world. We will also oppose many of the sacred cows held by the political left and political right in those same places. We will challenge you to change. We ask you to challenge us.

Join us in our mission to save our cities.

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