ABSTRACT
There are two truisms about the fate of urbanist ideals – that urbanists generally
failed to solve the problems they were trying to redress, and, that their proposals,
implemented in whole or in part, often generated perverse outcomes (Hoch, 1995).
Cast in this way, it is diffi cult to imagine why American urbanists persist. Clearly
the American city, in all its various forms, is the product of multiple actions, some
benevolent and some not, many of which were not products of any particular
