Each development theory, in response to previous forms, addresses
the issues of its historical and geographic context. While decrying the various Utopian visions for short-sidedness, few of us in the Western context have
grown up in the soot filled, crowded and chaotic world of industrializing
cities. Would we envision a different future than these utopias? We can criticize
their god-like ambitions for reshaping societies, but not their motivations; ontologically,
are our roads towards social improvement paved differently?
Our modern champions found in New Urbanism would have been
seen as promoting the problem-ridden status quo in the past context it seeks to
emulate. Do we throw the baby out with the bathwater? Fishman ignores the vast
history of agrarian nuclear-like families seen for centuries before industrialized
cities and suburbs. The bourgeois or middle class didn't invent single family
homes; they sought to bridge the benefits of rural and urban.
Fishman also ignores economics for forming suburbs, those
with mobility logically exercise that ability—while villianized, in context
their behaviors are not illogical—even while the externalities of their
decisions, similar to “white flight”, led to significant social ills which we
can ONLY see with the hindsight natural to the social sciences.
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