Now European planners, who pioneered this particular perversion, are beginning to doubt its efficacy. CityLab reports a major theme of the recent Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) meeting:
Smart growth, whether urban growth boundaries or compact transit-oriented development, is essentially European. And now the Europeans are saying the command-and-control approach doesn’t work so well. European nations are actually adopting more of an American stance—a decentralized agenda, pushing down remaining responsibilities to local jurisdictions, and counting on local planners to engage the citizenry much more.We won't be out of the woods until planners give up bashing suburbs/exurbs. Exurbanite Thomas Jefferson understood more about optimal population densities than they ever will.
Planning should involve helping people have the life they choose and can afford. Allowing a regimented high-density existence is fine for those who like it, forcing it on those who don't is not.
