New Urbanism

We will return shortly to the bread-crumb trail, but I would like to jump ahead to another epiphany, this time conceptual. On the website of the Newburgh Preservation Association I was introduced for the first time to the principles of New Urbanism. The core idea -- that the combination of limitless suburban sprawl and the decay of our central cities is an environmental, societal and human disaster -- gave coherence to things that had been vaguely bothering me for years. In their words:

The Congress for the New Urbanism views disinvestment in central
cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race
and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands
and wilderness, and the erosion of society’s built heritage as one interrelated
community-building challenge.

The solution -- vibrant, diverse, pedestrian-friendly cities. Cities that fully utilize their geography as well their history and architectural heritage, to become places where people from diverse backgrounds could live and work. Countryside is restored to forest and farm; people return to cities.

The course of my own life has been in the opposite direction. My grandparents were city dwellers, but I was raised in the suburbs, and then raised my two children even further out in exurbia. All the while, the cities where my parents' roots lay -- Newark, New Jersey and St. Louis, Missouri -- suffered race riots and then decades of neglect and decline.

A few great coastal cities, New York being perhaps the most dramatic example, have prospered and grown, but become so expensive that a normal, middle class lifestyle is unaffordable -- a further driver of sprawl, with its attendant consequences, including the impact on families of long commutes, as well as the environmental ills focused on by the New Urbanists.

I had always been vaguely uncomfortable with all this, but it had never moved to the forefront of my thinking. I suppose I never believed that I could do anything about it. But the idea of revitalizing urban wasteland must have lain dormant, a seed waiting for the right conditions to germinate.

Something about Newburgh, so desolate, and so fraught with potential, had awoken both a sense of loss and a longing to make things better. I asked myself, why couldn't Newburgh be wonderful?

What better place than Newburgh to create a new/old city? Rooted in a rich history, grounded in a diverse community, with a remarkable architectural stock; located in a naturally beautiful area, with access to a variety of recreation and transportation facilities; all the elements are in place.

Two words -- "vibrant" and "diverse" -- stand out, as if the intersection of these two qualities were a point on the compass towards which our journey must be headed.

What had begun as a search for an investment property had become a mission.

Now we can get back to the bread-crumb trail.