We find ourselves in a process of place making and in new kinds of places, whose grammar cannot be captured in concentric and hierarchical forms. Yet I have described approvingly the New Urbanist use of some traditional centralized urban elements.
These seemingly opposed views are reconciled in the realization that New Urbanist places fit into a larger landscape where their the traditional forms may improve the density and quality of local living, but do not express the whole linked process.
We should not expect any single formal strategy, no matter how traditional or anti-traditional, to sum up how we live today.
(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001