Kinch at Building Big Easy chalks up Modern envy with New Urbanists’ sweep of Gulf Coast planning as another example of being out of touch.
bq. The New Urbanists are taking the initiative in getting in touch with the residents, listening and making proposals. The Modernists, on the other hand, write articles in Artforum magazine about why New Urbanism is bad.
Yow!
west north 
I thought most of the proposals in Art Forum were pretty lackluster, but it’s hardly an article about ‘why New Urbanism is bad,’ — there are four sentences about New Urbanism out of a twenty-page feature.
Art Forum isn’t a planning or architecture magazine — it’s a magazine on ideas about art. As Building Big Easy says, the “Modernists’ probably do ‘believe that … they … have the vision to move society forward.” I don’t think that the contributors to Art Forum’s collection of proposals actually think that they will be built – they are being presented as possiblities — paper architecture. John Massengale ridicules that approach, but it would be more constructive to engage with the ideas presented. Thomas Mayne’s proposal [in AF] does ‘ignore marketability and popularity with the general public.’ However, It goes farther than any other proposal I’ve seen to preserve the long-term viability of the city.