My Critique on New Urbanism

My critique on 'New Urbanism' begins with an opinion that I do not think that New Urbanism will work to help resolve some of the most pressing issues that plague our urban centers and metropolitan areas. I think the main issue with New Urbanism is something that doesn't deal with the issues of inequity of opportunity and the disparity of wealth that seems to rear its nasty head more often in city centers due to the juxtaposition of gentrified and non-gentirfied areas. These areas of New Urbanism are made to approach issues such as being environmentally friendly and addressing issuess such as walkability and transit. I think these issues have unfortunately fallen by the wayside and I think that these new urbanist developments have become preoccupied by creating housing developments that attract young and wealthy tenants and not been allowing the development of low-income housing. An example of this would be the development that is going to be taking place or already has taken place in the Franklinton neighborhood on the west side of Columbus. They are developing a lot of mid-to-high-end apartment buildings which do not help the issues of the wealth disparity between neighborhoods, and instead this idea of new urbanism is just creating more areas for wealthy, mostly white, people to move where lower-income people used to live. The basic concepts behind new urbanism are positive and we should strive to achieve more walkable and more transit accessbile places, but we shouldn't sacrfice deiveristy of income levels and diversity of people in order to achieve these goals.