Market Forces at Work

Posted by on June 15, 2006

Yale Urban Planning Professor Alex Garvin, a smart, lovely man who also heads his own urban planning firm, responded in a letter to the editor to the Fake Town piece in The Wall Street Journal last week.

Alex writes, "The force creating these new shopping centers isn't a change in style but a change in market forces -- not New Urbanism, but simply urbanism.

"In metropolitan areas across the country, highways are reaching the limits of how much traffic they can handle and people are reaching their limits of how far they're willing to drive, especially as gas prices continue to climb. In response, developers are looking to develope land more intensively. Infill development is going up on parking lots, and one-family houses are being replaced by multiple dwelllings. Consequently, close-in developable land is becoming scarce, and land prices are rising. In this environment, spread-out shopping cneters aren't just unstylish, they're inefficient."

Alex goes on to write, "This dense reurbanization has created pent-up demand for a public realm, that space where citizens meet one another, move around, play and relax. Those who provide it become competitive. That who don't, close down. That's not a style. That's the market at work."