How big a threat are the New Urbanists to an individual’s liberty?
Staley: If the New Urbanist vision is imposed coercively, they are a very real threat. Forcing people to live in an environment they don’t want to live in, telling them how to live, manipulating them to achieve a certain social urban function — that’s the kind of society that most people don’t want. The interesting thing is that if you recognize neo-traditional planning as an option, and you recognize that it’s one part of a very diverse continuum of urban living, you would see that neo- traditional planning could be a way to help improve freedom. Lots of communities in older, traditional cities would see New Urbanist concepts emerge spontaneously as part of a free market. The neo-traditional planner’s problem is that he wants to impose his vision on everybody. So rather than looking at neighborhoods case by case, he’s making an attempt to impose his vision on all people. EN: In resisting the New Urbanists, is it necessary to be anti-city? Staley: No. From my viewpoint, a market-orien
