an excerpt from that discussion can be found in Studio Works 7

... Finally, we conclude Studio Works 7 with a recent debate between Rem Koolhaas and Andreas Duany from the Exploring New Urbanism(s) conference of 1999. This debate simultaneously serves to recapitulate the arguments and ideas of the post-1969 period and perhaps serves as a threshold to the next era of debates accentuating clearly defined formal and ideological differences.

try contacting alan himself... he's listed as a regular contributor/behind the scenes archinector...

Harvard published a DVD called "Exploring New Urbansim(s)" in 1999. I believe the full debate is on that....

Andres has transcripts of everything. Contact him. He is very friendly. I was there; it was mostly memorable for the way that Andres ran up and down and all over Rem and Rem refused to say much of anything - in essence he did not have a position when pressed against the wall. Most in the audience and many on the panels did not agree with Andres and most were hoping for more resistence from Rem. That he chose during much of the debate not to respond, much less debate his vs. Andres' position was either a type of useless coyness on his part or perhaps and more likely given Andres's attack mode he felt more like he was talking to the architectural equivalent of Steven Colbert and all he could think to do was throw up his arms and say, I'm confused and then refuse to engage.

what does a thinker do when faced with an evangelist?

steven, I guess then the thinker's 'forced' to ponder about the existence of God.

sweet goodness, i hope not.

interesting to be reminded that rem the intellectual has no position on many things...he is sorta into "being there" than making the new... so can imagine him not being interested in attacking duany.

to answer the original post, you may also like to read the michigan press booklet on new urbanism, pitting lars lerup against pete calthorpe...

but to be honest my understanding of the dutch scene was that they have been pursuing the compact city model rather than the north american "smart growth" or new urbanist one...the difference is that smart growth is viewed as a kind of compromise approach to planning that accepts the automobile as a reality to deal with. the compact city tends to assume automobiles should not exist...

another major distinction between much of europe and north america, is that population is shrinking in europe, while it is growing quite fast in the USA/NA...this means the problem is one of dealing with growth in an intelligent way in one instance, and dealing with shrinkage in an intelligent way in the other...in this respect comparing the 2 versions of "sustainable city planning" is a little bit problematic.

Jump,

Your observations are in correct re: shrinkage versus growth and the differing challenges to European urbanism versus American urbanism. We are very different continents with very different histories. However, there are significant parts of the European community that are experiencing growth such as Ireland and significant swaths of America that are shrinking - upstate New York. They have much to learn from each other and dialogue across continents such as that promised at harvard in 1999 seemed even back then valuable. With regard to sustainability it certainly seems that Amercian practice and urban design are catching up fast if they have not already caught up.

I think to claim that Rem is into being there versus more than the new seems to be at the crux of his problematic position and this is what was on display at Harvard. I think he has rigourously sought out the extreme in urbanism as new and what makes him interesting and problematic at the same time is that he for the most part refuses to pass judgement on extreme urbanisms, even when it can be demonstrated that many are suffering because of it; witness the very uncomplimentary article on him in the New Yorker a couple of months ago.

Duaney in contrast and perhaps ironically given his supposed conservatism has been an advocate of pragmatic and radically pragmatic change within the context of tradition and precedent and market mechanisms and has pursued his dialogue with moral vigor to the point of annoyance for other architects. It is precisely his ethical stances towards the new within a neo-tradittoional context that were the challenge for Koolhaus at the Harvard forum and Rem's unwillingness to address these or challenge Andres at that forum was a disapointment to many who hold him up as being not only observationally astute but architecturally progressive. He came across as a tired relatavist who was mostly interested in riding the wave of glory wave of globalism - and that is what he has done.

Lots has changed since since 1999. The main change in the US is that Duany's position has become almost rigorously normative; he has won the battle for the minds and hearts of Amercian planners as far as all but a small number who mostly exist in a few schools and cities are concerned. Fascinatingly even as normative urban practice has ossified his positions on urbanism have become more diverse and nuanced and progressive; Andres is always growing and he has both embraced contemporary architecture, when appropriate, endorsed forms of urban development that are outside of traditional urbanism (see this month's Metropolis Magazine), and become powerful politically in a way that no other practicing architect is - agree with him or not.

Rem in contrast has produced very interesting and landmark buildings but in general his urbanism, while influential to architects, has had little impact and less as time goes on. Many sensed this would be the case after the Harvard forum and were dissapointed because so much was invested in Koolhaas' appearance of progressiveness and the belief that his contemporary architecture somehow was symbolic of politically progressive beliefs.

thanks for correction, jkaliski. i was generalising. of course the shrinking city gig is a big one, and there are parallels, even here in japan (all helpfully pointed out by the work of phillip oswalt, now also in japanese in honor of his recent exhibition in tokyo).

on other hand so far all/most of the recent papers i have read about dutch planning in terms of sustainability have been about their experiments with compact city concepts from the 90's, mostly with mixed results, and a growing realisation that the auto is not easily removed from the equation. in america, the sustainable front appears to be more pragmatic, and research and theories seem to be less dogmatic about the position of the automobile...again i am generalising, but i do believe the american approach is much more open to compromise than the dutch one has allowed, so far...so for me the new urbanist approach, while sharing many ideas with the compact city concept, is actually not something that really is happening in holland....basically i think the compact city and new urbanism are separate but similar models. that america's population is still soaring is, i believe, a contributing factor to this separation (the plight of detroit notwithstanding). of course there are other issues, but this one is interesting for me...

thing i quite like about new urbanism, especially duany and calthorpe (probably not kunstler though) is the willingess as a movement to take on outside ideas, disarming attacks by absorbing them as their own. it is quite remarkable.

odd to hear that there were those expectations of rem. i never got the impression that he particularly cares for that kind of speculation. in many ways he is more of an historian than a theorist.

Jump, I agree with everything you are saying. With regard to compact cities versus new urbanism in their European versus North American forms respectively,my thought is that the movements are parrallel and complimentary, not withstanding that they look dissimillar and there are different cultural constructs at their core. Another way of saying this is that the goals and objectives are much the same but manifest themselves somewhat differently when projected into three dimensions because of different land ownership regimes, legal systems and rights, political systems and rights, etc.

One big difference, and now I generalize, is that there is much more public process from the grass roots up in the United States and much less willingness to accept professional expertise. The designer is asked to be a medium for the public wil in your typical American urban planning and design situation. In Europe in general public participation is less developed and the expertise of professionals both in government and out is accepted. The designer leads and educates.Regardless the issues being addressed are very similar. In Holland I am always amazed that the car is an issue and that there is so much interest in understanding how to incorporate it into the urban planning continuum - while maintaining Dutchness. In Santa Monica, California there are many people who advocate the car free city concept and its Downtown is becoming less and less car friendly and more pdestrian oriented, though surely in an American manner given the grid of wide streets, public private partnerships that control the space, etc.. Buffalo, Detroit, large portions of the Midwest and New England have much in common with Northern Europe even as Dublin and West Dublic adapt growth plans that have much in common with Portland. The extremes are obviously different, certainly in feeling and implementation tools.

My observations here are in part shaped by recent experience. Last week, when I was on the autobahn in Germany, on the way from Weimar to Berlin, I was both struck at how familiar my surroundings were, i.e. car culture everywhere, and yet how different. This difference is what I feel new urbanism, for all its problems, has been far more acute at attending to, in the nature of reform and reforming, than Koolhaas and his coherts, and in this sense I could not agree more with you that the latter is more interested in observation than theiries that lead to action and reform.

there was a book back in the mid late 80's which was a compilation of a round table discussion about contemporary architecture etc... all i can remember about it is rob krier's insulting some ito house. it was quite funny as i recall.

don't mean to bump, the thread....just wanted to thank y'all for your help!