Joel Kotkin, a fellow at Chapman University and an untiring defender of the suburbs, begins a recent column in the Washington Post with a valid question: “What is a city for?” He then proceeds to get that question completely wrong. But really, we should be thanking him. In his article, he neatly sums up many of the key myths emerging from the anti-urbanism set, making my job of debunking these myths a lot easier. Without further ado, here are 7 key points that critics get wrong about New Urbanism.

Myth 1: Population growth = urban success

In recent weeks, the US media has whipped itself into a frenzy over the fact that people are leaving cities in democratic leaning “blue” states for republican leaning states. Kotkin and other new urbanism critics have seized on this as proof positive that sprawl is awesome, as if to say, “See? More people are moving there so they must be successful.” At first this would seem to make sense. But while population growth is an important factor in determining the effectiveness of cities, it’s not everything. Paul Krugman points out that wages are lower in these red state boom towns. And in addition, blue state cities still outperform red state cities in GDP overall. Also, using population growth as the only measure of urban success stops making sense when taken to its logical extreme. In developing countries, poor informal settlements lacking basic services are growing faster than suburbs in the US, but my guess is Kotkin would still prefer suburbs.....Continue Reading

> via thisbigcity.net