My good pal and surfing buddy, Bill Cross of Palm Beach County’s Zoning Division, sent me a link to a preview for the University of Miami School of Architecture’s online course on New Urbanism.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

This unit introduces the crisis of place that is the result of sixty years of sprawl and urban disinvestment and the alternative presented by the New Urbanism. It is a crisis that has generated searing critiques from urbanists beginning with Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs and William Whyte in the 1950s, environmentalists such as Ian McHarg and Rachel Carson since the 1960s, and an endless stream of research by social scientists since the Costs of Sprawl study was published by the Real Estate Research Corporation in 1974.

The whole preview can be found here: http://nuonline.arc.miami.edu/preview/index.html

And you can register for the course here: http://nuonline.arc.miami.edu/register.html 

The bottom line? “Friends don’t let friends sprawl” (stolen from a 1000 Friends of Florida bumper sticker sitting here next to my computer) or, gated communities and cul-de-sacs must end.