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- ~~ IS iSSs <br />15 Ways to F~ <br />the Suburbs <br />Most of us actually know what we want in a neighborhood-we just don't <br />know how to get it, because developers have been building the wrong thing <br />for 50 years. Here's how to get our communities back on track. <br /> ~ ~ <br /> <br />`~ ~ <br />i ~~i-~i~i <br />i-~ .., <br />- <br />~,~ <br /> '~. ' <br /> 'i . <br /> t' V <br />---- <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> f , ti~ -~-,.~- <br /> <br /> <br />JOHN HUMtlLE <br />Moving day-at Kentlands, the neotraditional suburb in Maryland where houses are close to the street and to each other <br />OR DECADES, ANTON NELESSON OF RUTGERS <br />University has been using the tools of science <br />to pursue that most elusive and subjective <br />quality, happiness. When a developer comes <br />into a community, humbly seeking permission <br />to re-create ancient Pompeii on the site of an <br />old Go Kart track, the town's planners com- <br />mission Nelesson to survey the populace and <br />determine if that's what they'd actually like <br />there. Using photographs, models and questionnaires, Nelesson <br />has surveyed people all over the country, and these are some of the <br />things he's found: <br />• "Everybody will call for a green open space in the middle- <br />that's automatic. They will put the major community buildings <br />around the plaza, then group the houses on relatively narrow <br />streets. Ninety-nine percent dori t want streets that are more than <br />two lanes wide. At the edges of the village they leave open space." <br />^ "With two working spouses, [smaller lots] make a lot more <br />sense. You don't want to mow that big lawn." <br />^ "People have a fundamental, psychological, spiritual <br />response to nature. If you show them recently built multi- <br />family housing or office parks, they go negative. A small, tra- <br />ditional neighborhood is what people want. They don't know how <br />to get it." <br />Well, of course they don t: most of them haven't even seen a <br />"small, traditional neighborhood" in years, if ever. But they in- <br />stinctively choose it anyway. The premise of the new urbanism is <br />that people can have the kinds of neighborhoods they say they like. <br />Architects know how to design them, developers can build them, <br />banks can make money on them. All it takes is a measure of <br />political will to overcome the inertia of 50 years of doing things the <br />wrong way ...and the application of a few simple rules. ^ <br />NEWSWEEK MAx !5+ J995 <br />a, <br />