On the other hand, most members of the Planners' Network (PN), Association of Community Design (ACD) and Architects, Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR), frequently find themselves serving grassroots communities who are bearing the brunt of change instigated by larger public and private partnerships. Their professional skills help locally determined means of revitalization that include protections against displacement. Indigenous communities, squatters, migrant workers, inner-city tenants' rights groups, and ‘communities of resistance,' are among their clients. This is not to say that governments do not contract the services of these professionals. Quite often they help steer policies in directions that will reduce friction across socioeconomic classes. An excerpt from the PN's brief statement of purpose highlights its basic difference with the CNU: "We believe that planning should be a tool for allocating resources and developing the environment to eliminate the great inequalities of wealth and power in our society…we advocate public responsibility for meeting these needs, because the private market has proven incapable of doing so."

Politics. Given who they serve, the CNU must appeal to the middle of the body politic and avoid structural criticisms. Injustices in the system might be noticed, but solutions must first pass the test of sponsoring agencies. If homeownership is a desirable solution to neighborhood revitalization — whether by HUD, the mayor or RDA (Redevelopment Agency) — and renters must be displaced, the CNU adopts the appropriate ideology. Does anyone ever seek to displace large concentrations of wealthy people to create a healthy mix of incomes? Only those without property stand in the way of ‘progress.' Since they are much cheaper to move, and since it is believed they have serious social pathologies anyway — which is the root of why they are poor — some individuals are always displaced in the creation of ‘healthier' communities.

The CNU, fixated on applying physical design formulas, too often skirted these issues as the purview of others. Although after repeated cries for attention, Angela Blackwell was invited to speak about gentrification at the recent CNU conference in Portland, her minor presence on the agenda was eclipsed by the magnitude of the CNU's built work that has itself generated the subject.

Recently, the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley, sponsored a conference about the New Urbanism. One of the keynote speakers was Oakland's Mayor Jerry Brown; presumably because he is encouraging the development of 6000 units for 10,000 new residents in downtown Oakland. The organizers ignored the fact that he luring developers of market rate housing, and aggressively and publicly campaigning against further production of affordable housing, calling it the ‘slumification' of Oakland. He is encouraging developers and property owners to shut down remaining SROs and he has threatened the eviction of an SRO and multi-service center for the homeless that is owned and operated by the City. He has even encouraged a nationally known development corporation (that is interested in developing a site in downtown Oakland), to exclude the 20% it set-aside for affordable units it was planning to include in a future development. A price is paid for the CNU's willingness to go to bed with the centers of power who embrace the logic and ideology of the ‘free market.' The CNU's willingness to take sides is proving to be embarrassing, if not structural, to its approach.

Methodology. For the CNU, professionals under direct contract to the sponsoring agencies usually facilitate their local participation in any decision-making; therefore, they can be certain that the outcomes do not contradict the goals and intentions of the sponsors. The CNU speaks to the need for flexibility and responsiveness to local conditions through participation, and maintains a goal of achieving comprehensive solutions to community problems. But the CNU's approach ultimately rests upon a collection of physical design formulas and participation is directed into and within this framework. To question the expenditure of public dollars on sticks and bricks instead of intensive tutorials; serious job training; educational trust funds for residents; micro-loans for small businesses; and decreased spending on physical improvements, with only enough to meet code and repairs, are simply not tolerated. Public and private developers, viewing the world from the middle of the class structure, see a well-designed environment as a higher priority over intensive people-oriented solutions.

The measure of success from this worldview is too often seen in terms of increased property values. Recent claims of success by HUD, in its HOPE VI program, state that resident incomes have risen by 32% in the transformed projects. This disguises the fact that people of higher incomes were imported into the upscaled projects and lower income households were exported with vouchers. Also, given the history of capitalism, the present so-called economic boom, will eventually come to an end and when incomes drop, how will we fare with an overall reduction in available affordable housing because of HOPE VI?

On the other hand, a quick scan of a few of the PN's Newsletters and a review of some of the projects undertaken by the ACD's membership, reveals a bottom-up methodology. The foremost intention of these efforts is to achieve ‘empowerment,' not the rebuilding of real estate conditions. Community organizing is the long-term goal; real estate development projects are a means to build a community's ability to protect and expand its interests against more powerful and propertied interests. Good design and sensible land use combinations are important goals, but they are always in the service of building the economic and political capacity of disenfranchised communities—and not to improve local property values. In fact, in a market-driven economy, these goals can often be in direct conflict.

From this alternative view, award-winning physical solutions are not the end result, but represent trophies that prove that a local under-served population has the capacity to achieve fine results when given the opportunity. If the notion of bringing change to a community, and how to achieve it, are instigated by outside sources of capital, no matter how well-intentioned the design team may be, it will always meets resistance. This highlights the fundamental difference between the position that physical design plays in organizations like the PN or ACD, versus the CNU. For these alternative designers and planners, their work and products are tools for organizing disenfranchised communities. For the CNU, the photogenic results of the built environment, and the policies and codes that achieve them, still seem to be the end purpose. Given the overwhelming majority of the content of its periodical, New Urban News, a reader cannot help but conclude that they believe good physical planning and design, as defined by its experts, are the sine qua non for making a better society.

HOPE VI. In some ways it is no wonder that HUD and local RDAs are rushing to the physically fixated CNU formulas. To the progressive left, this predisposition for seeking quick physical fixes as signs of social improvement is endemic to the class position of those who steer these agencies. After all, legislators and executives who are reflecting the dominant ideology direct them. This is not to downplay the importance of well-designed and comfortable environs for everyone, for, as an architect, this is what I do. But there are too many beautiful places in the world populated by perfectly miserable people, and too many miserable places populated with perfectly wonderful people, still living with high hopes because certain social, cultural and educational opportunities are perceived to be, or are in fact, in place for their offspring. Such observations from traveling in the First and Third Worlds cannot help but give pause to messianic assertions about the important role of good physical design to making a good society. I cannot ascribe it the same level of salvation that the CNU leadership is willing to claim. When used in this manner, our work as architects and planners becomes a kind of cultural legitimizer for the inordinate preoccupation with property values held by elements of the larger society.

It is often argued that the dramatic removal and rebuilding of communities is what the poor also want. But what choices are given? What if the $250,000 required to build a new HOPE VI unit were alternatively offered as a $25,000 a year grant for five years? The annual interest could create an educational trust fund for a family along with a minor rehab-to-code of the same family's existing unit. Which would that family choose? They may reside in the newly built unit for five years—maybe even a decade as it becomes older and more worn. What is the asset life span of a quality education? A lifetime.

The CNU may respond that physical improvement is HUD's charge, and after all, under HOPE VI some funds now can be diverted away from sticks and bricks to social and economic programs. But if the CNU has achieved the clout with HUD that it claims, it could be using its bully pulpit to refuse to serve those PHA's that are fixated upon unnecessary physical improvements—either in the form of totally rebuilding or gut rehab—to the detriment of people-oriented programs. And certainly, they should not be serving any PHA that has not made one-to-one housing replacement its highest priority, to insure that all units for very low income households are replaced, either on- or off-site.

This has not been the case. Instead, there has been an unconscionable silence on the part of the CNU about the lack of a one-to-one replacement policy nationwide. A few years ago, the architect, John McLaren and I, assisted Seattle's Displacement Coalition in preparing an alternative plan to the one prepared for a HOPE VI tear down of over 900 public housing units for very low income residents. The latter plan provided only one third of the new units for low income residents. The CNU, under the auspices of HUD, was asked to review and approve of the local housing authority's design along with others that were emerging around the country. The CNU raised no objections to the displacement policy.

The tenants' rights group was convinced that the proposed ‘new urbanist' remake was too costly. The implementation of its planning principles for gridded streets and alleys would necessitate a very extensive road and infrastructure system that would consume too much of the budget. A less expensive, but equally workable revision was devised as an alternative that would save the existing picturesque ‘garden city' layout, and most of its 250 mature trees. It would also save substantial funds that would help build off-site replacement units for very low-income residents. Based on the results of their alternative plan, the tenants' rights coalition convinced the City Council. The City then withdrew several million dollars of its funds and redirected them to non-profits to help build the lost units. However, the original New Urbanist layout moved ahead with the reduced number of units available to very low-income households. Across the country, stories about injustices related to HOPE VI and co-opted methods of ‘resident participation,' which are ‘vouchering out' the outspoken troublemakers, abound.

The Seaside Institute is sponsoring a series of conferences about New Urbanism (2000-2001). All, but one, are open to the public—or to anyone who can pay their way. One conference — that is being co-sponsored by HUD, the CNU and the ULI — regarding the design of public housing, is by invitation only. This exclusivity suggests that the organizers are afraid to make certain topics open for critical discussion. Perhaps the Seaside of The Truman Story really does exist and cannot tolerate the disruption that this debate may cause.

Style. This is not a discussion about issues of architectural style. I am referring to the management style of the CNU. Granted, the organization is not even a decade old but after eight years the same handful of founders still rules its board with tight control over its content and direction. Member comprised Task Forces are a recent innovation to help tow the organization's line, but ultimately, their recommended initiatives must be approved by the board. A recent effort to single out the unique conditions of lower income communities, or more specifically, how to deal with the problems of structural poverty and gentrification, was to be addressed by an Inner City Task Force. This group has been folded into a larger task force titled, "Development and Implementation," presumably to insure that the discussions about equity remain part of other discussions that include private developers pursuing market-driven strategies. Only time will tell how these thorny political issues will survive in that setting.

While the CNU wants to be more inclusive, it remains affordable primarily to well-paid professionals. The fee for its recent annual conference in Portland was $400. On the other hand, the ACD held its annual conference simultaneously as the CNU at a local community facility with an entry fee of $50. This is a reflection of the incomes being earned by the different memberships and, a difference in approach that attempts to include non-professionals of modest means. Because of the simultaneous occurrence of their conferences, the ACD (with its 30-years of experience working as architects and planners in lower income communities) approached the CNU (with its less than 10-years) to organize a panel discussion that would tackle the unique issues facing designers as understood from their respective positions. The CNU turned down the ACD's proposal. While the ACD mentioned in its conference literature that the CNU was taking place concurrently, and its members were encouraged to attend both when possible, the CNU made no mention of the ACD conference in its literature. In fact, many of the CNU leadership had never even heard of the ACD.

Possibilities for Collaboration with the CNU
Given that the CNU views its mission as giving physical form to the goals and aspirations of government agencies or private developers seeking major transformations in the physical environment, and recognizing that these interests are not always in sync with the interests of lower income populations, perhaps the membership of the PN and the ACD can be seen as a group of advocacy professionals who are available to those with limited economic and political clout and who may be threatened by the consequences of these larger interventions. In the same way that the justice system insures balanced representation by allocating two pools of public funds to support public prosecutors and public defenders, there should be representation for those without property when their physical environment is in jeopardy. Those threatened must be sufficiently organized in order to select their own representatives and be prepared to develop their own proposals for change.

With all due respect for the CNU's membership, they cannot be all things to all people if only a specific interest is paying the piper. This has always been true with real estate development and the CNU not immune to these biases. This approach can bring much relief to CNU members when addressing inner-city conflicts because they no longer have to play a duplicitous role; fearing the anger of their sponsors if they side too much with the complainants, while scheming with graphics and language to seduce suspicious lower income residents or neighbors to accept their sponsors' plans. Even when dealing with the kind of NIMBY-ism that market-rate developers face when operating in upscaled communities, the experience with careful and honest community participation built upon neighborhood trust—which members of the ACD and PN have developed—can be an asset to moving such developments forward.

The role of the advocate architect or planner is to seek workable solutions that are acceptable to those who are threatened. The teams of professionals engaged by both sides are not in a win-lose encounter, but on an honest quest for options that can satisfy everyone. There will certainly be compromises on both sides, but those who distrust the motives and potential consequences of the sponsoring agencies will have the satisfaction of having been heard, and not having been manipulated by someone else's team.

Conclusion. Those who know my built work cannot understand why I have been so vocal in my criticisms of the CNU. My affordable housing work has won its share of awards and is viewed as sympathetic to the principles of the CNU. Given my review at the start of this article (ARCADE, 19.2, December 2000) of where most of my generation of architects has chosen to apply its talents, some may think I am just a few degrees from where the CNU seems to be headed. As a member of the CNU, I fully respect the extraordinary way they have tapped into the discontent within the middle classes about their lowered quality of life, and the way they have been able to muster the attention, if not involvement, of architects is nothing short of herding cats —the author being a case in point. The case studies the CNU has been collecting are extraordinary achievements given the effort it takes to move the inertial mass of our culture away from the poor living habits it has learned over the past fifty years.

But it is the central position of physical design put forth by the CNU, in their overall scheme for improving society—not just by how narrowly they may be defining it, but in particular, how it is being applied within disadvantaged communities—that has alienated not just myself, but others in the organizations I have cited and caring members of the larger design profession who are hesitating from embracing it. By accepting the dominance of the ‘material' in our society, the CNU may simply be perpetuating the deep cause of our maladies; only now correcting it enough to redress its recent destructive social and physical consequences, and to allow us all to continue to make acquisition and appearances the centers of our being.

The critics of the CNU will not bring down what is becoming the dominant ideology of the mainstream, for the development of our environment in the foreseeable future, because it is compatible with the logic and ideology of market-driven economies. While they may help many in years to come, we can only hope that their critics will be heard as well—and those being criticized will make every effort to minimize the pain they cause others. If not, the next generation will soon be on their heels, pointing to their contradictions and failings, and how capitalism compromised their charter and co-opted their membership into simply creating a more seductive form of business as usual.

Michael Pyatok FAIA is the principal of Pyatok Associates with offices in Seattle, WA and Oakland, CA. He is a Professor in the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Washington.