Response to Matthew Heins

摘要

The spirit of Matthew Heins' (2015) paper is correct-that New Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism can join forces-but it is first necessary to set the record straight on a couple of points. First, a large part of Heins' argument rests on a mythical notion about what New Urbanism actually is. In fact it is not mostly devoted to greenfields and suburbs as opposed to existing, dense urban places and 'infill'. Such a distinction is impossible to make and has no basis in fact. New Urbanism includes codes, charrettes, rainwater initiatives, mixed-income housing strategies, retail planning, street redesign, civic space proposals, tactical place-making, generative design in the manner of Christopher Alexander, and plans for neighbourhoods, districts, corridors, regions and towns. In short, the 'greenfield' vs. 'infill' distinction does not fly, rendering statements about New Urbanism lauding urban density but rarely achieving it basically nonsensical.