ancient cities

form. Self­styled the new urbanism—and
intended as a direct antidote
to the uncontrolled
automobile­dependent sprawl outlined
above—it advocates the creation
of compact, ecologically
sustainable towns and urban spaces
where residents can walk or cycle to
workplaces, shops, schools, and leisure,
cultural, and entertainment
venues. Buildings and recreational
areas are arranged in street grids,
viewed to foster an enriched public
realm that enables social groups to
share plazas, squares, cafés, and
parks, leading to enduring land values,
the promotion of security, and
a sense of community.
Sensitive to local architectural
styles, the new urbanism is vehemently
opposed to the dominant
twentieth­century planning practice
of subdividing land into isolated
zones, which is considered to result
in traffic congestion and the all­toofamiliar
sprawling landscape of
car lots, homogeneous suburban
cul­de­sacs, jaded shopping malls,
office parks, and the urban problems
described above. Although the
new urbanism has struck a chord
with many planners and progressive
urbanists in recent years, some critics
have highlighted how such communities
are deeply punctuated by
class and racial divides and indeed
serve to represent a novel way of
extracting profits for developers.
Interpreting a Patchwork Urbanism
One scholar who has made explicit reference to
the idea of a patchwork urbanism (and to whom
the current authors are thereby indebted) is the
Marxist geographer David Harvey. Harvey warns
of how the new urban political strategies of city
governments and the associated neoliberalization
of urban space have created some deeply entrenched
geographical disparities in wealth and power,
fashioning a metropolitan world of chronically
Patchwork Urbanism
Downtown Los Angeles's Bunker Hill area has been redeveloped to include new
business complexes and loft residences. This photo shows offices and convenient
dining in a concentrated area, ideal for people working in adjacent districts.
Source: Tracy Buyan.
589
uneven geographical development. Wealth moves
to exurban spaces that explicitly exclude the poor
and the marginalized, or it encloses itself behind
high walls, in suburban privatopias and urban
gated communities. For Harvey, the effect is to
divide up the urban realm into a patchwork quilt
of islands of relative affluence, struggling to secure
their precarious prosperity in a sea of spreading
decay, leading to a profound division and fragmentation
of metropolitan space and a localized
defensive posture toward the rest of the city, with