That’s what I would have said to Shaun Donovan, Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development had I been able to reach the podium before he was whisked into a waiting car for a tour of Atlanta-area public housing sites. Donovan had just addressed the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU)’s annual gathering this May. CNU has been working tirelessly for the past two decades to find a new and better approach to community development in America.

Simply stated, CNU seeks to build strong, economically competitive regions woven from a fabric of walkable neighborhoods and districts, that offer beautiful, affordable places to live, work, learn and play. What CNU members dislike is the single-use development pattern known as suburban sprawl– the pattern prevalent in most places built over the past 50-60 years.

Apparently, Donovan dislikes sprawl too. He thanked CNU members for their part in changing “the way we think about our communities” and offered his critique of the suburban-edge housing boom that hindsight now tells us was a fool’s paradise:

“During the housing boom” Donovan said, “real estate agents suggested to families that couldn’t afford to live near job centers that they could find a more affordable home by living farther away.  Lenders bought into the ‘Drive to Qualify’ myth as well-giving easy credit to home-buyers without accounting for how much it might cost families to live in these areas or the risk they could pose to the market. And when these families moved in, they found themselves driving dozens of miles to work, to school, to the movies, to the grocery store, spending hours in traffic and spending nearly as much to fill their gas tank as they were to pay their mortgage-and in some places, more.”

Donovan’s words, and his agency’s plan for a $150-million Sustainable Communities grant program, clearly resonated with the diverse group of attendees at CNU. That audience–consisting of planners, architects, developers, municipal officials and others–was also delighted to learn about HUD’s new grant scoring criteria for “location efficiency” and their use of LEED-ND, the green neighborhood rating system developed by CNU in partnership with the National Resources Defense Council and the U. S. Green Building Council.

The Secretary’s remarks had a special resonance to me: In October 2008, just after Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into federal conservatorship and Lehman Brothers had filed for bankruptcy protection, I made this plea–it seemed an outlandish request at the time–in an earlier Citiwire column:

“Maybe it’s time, even as the billions of bailout dollars flow, for official Washington to get tough. It’s emerging as lender of last resort, asset manager for the wounded American taxpayer, assuming the responsibility for thousands of toxic mortgages on property that more diligent local planners might never have allowed to be built. So why could it not advocate–maybe even require as a price for the potential subsidies and loan insurance it may offer–compliance with planning rules aimed at promoting more economically robust, resource-efficient communities?”

With a change in national administration pending, my thought on making the request was “Why not?” Indeed, not since HUD’s Model Cities program of the 1960-70s had any federal agency ventured into local planning issues. In the decades since the Cold War, such matters were considered taboo for policy makers in Washington; anything sounding even remotely like “central planning” would trigger comparisons to the Soviet Union or “social engineering.”

But with the housing meltdown, everything had changed. Secretary Donovan freely acknowledged in his remarks that “for decades, the federal government has actually encouraged sprawl” including funding of beltways and highways to serve remote job centers. Perhaps it was time for the federal government to use its bully pulpit, and its budget, to promote better planning practices at the local level.

Many at CNU were most excited to hear about the imminent release of HUD’s NOFA (Notice of Funds Availability) for $150-million of funding for more sustainable regional plans, detailed community plans, and for regions already working within a sustainable planning context-specific financial incentives to help with implementation.

As the NOFA release draws nearer, there is much speculation: Will the money flow mostly to large metro regions with sophisticated planning efforts already underway that link future development to new public transit infrastructure? Or will smaller metros and rural communities have a reasonable chance to qualify on their own terms?

My reading the pre-NOFA materials suggests that what HUD really wants is to support the efforts of communities large, or small, that “get it.” OK–that’s my term; HUD’s language is more complex, referencing “multi-jurisdictional planning efforts that integrate housing, economic development, and transportation…”

As Smart Growth director in one of those smaller places that I truly believe “gets it”–Sarasota County, Florida–my colleagues and I would like to see just a small part of that funding to formulate, with our neighboring municipalities, the kind of plan that HUD most wants–an integrated framework for building compact, walkable neighborhoods that will help us get the most out of our existing road network, and our planned BRT (bus rapid transit) system.

But win or lose, I’m delighted to see the new game. Although HUD’s $150-million may seem like a lot of money, it’s just a drop in the bucket when one considers the many regions and smaller communities that will be competing for the funds. But as a multi-year program with ties to sister agencies EPA, DOT and possibly HHS, all of which have discussed bringing additional funds to the table, the program will likely inspire many regions–ours among them–to consider smart growth planning opportunities that might otherwise be overlooked.

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There’s a critical “place” story beyond the carelessness and/or chicanery of subprime mortgage lenders and resellers who precipitated the crisis that’s triggered a $700 billion federal bailout and global financial jitters.

It’s the brutal geographic sorting out of winners and losers among the residential properties we call home. It has to do with the “intrinsic value” of a dwelling. Which, in turn, has to do with where it’s located and the convenience and amenities of the surrounding community.

In his study Driven to the Brink, researcher Joe Cortright identifies an emerging pattern of home price fluctuations spanning many U.S. regions. “Distant suburbs,” he writes, “have seen the biggest declines, while values in close-in neighborhoods have held up better, and in some cases continued to increase.”

The picture’s not without exceptions, including the despair of already troubled neighborhoods in such “rustbelt” cities as Cleveland and Detroit. But the pattern across the continent is fairly consistent: Dwellings within walkable neighborhoods, close to transit, shopping and places of entertainment, are holding their own in terms of price and value.

By contrast, the future appears far bleaker for the endless rows of foreclosed homes out on the urban fringes — the “drive ’til you qualify” subdivisions located half a gas tank away from most everywhere. Christopher Leinberger, in his Atlantic article “The Next Slum,” says there are clear signals that such places “will become magnets for poverty, crime and social dysfunction.”

We were sowing the seeds of this for decades. And at first, it seemed like a good idea. In the new suburbia that developed after World War II, tract subdivisions were churned out by “production builders” providing affordable housing for the masses. Accompanying strip shopping centers offered convenience. Commutes into town (often on federal interstate highways) were easy enough.

But by the early ’90s, the cracks in the Suburban Dream were starting to show. Roads surrounded by partially completed developments were going into gridlock. Millions of Americans found they had to spend most of their non-working hours behind the wheel commuting longer and longer distances, or ferrying kids to the playgrounds and other activities that in earlier times had been a hop, skip and a jump from home.

In 1993 I was attracted to (and helped represent) the rebellious group of architects and town planners called “New Urbanists.” We wanted a return to the kind of compact, walkable neighborhoods where many of our parents grew up. Such places, built mostly prior to the Great Depression of the 1930s, featured main streets and town squares, corner stores and small schools easily accessed by neighborhood children on foot or bicycle.

The critics snickered at our bid to reinvent historic town form. Americans’ love affair with the automobile, they said, would never end. Though now, in an era of $4 gallon gas and traffic congestion horrors, the latter-20th century model is clearly running on fiscal fumes.

Today the New Urbanist model is now being constructed in hundreds of successful neighborhoods nationwide. It rejects the formula of cul-de-sacked McMansions, instead offering a range of housing choices: Single-family homes sit cheek by jowl with duplexes, triplexes and apartment buildings. Seniors can “age in place” because shopping, parks, libraries, clinics are close at hand, obviating the need to drive for every errand. True community is being planned, and implemented. And the evidence is in: this works!

Maybe it’s time, even as the billions of bailout dollars flow, for official Washington to get tough. It’s emerging as lender of last resort, asset manager for the wounded American taxpayer, assuming the responsibility for thousands of toxic mortgages on property that more diligent local planners might never have allowed to be built. So why could Washington not advocate — maybe even require as a price for the potential subsidies and loan insurance it may offer — compliance with planning rules aimed at promoting more economically robust, resource-efficient communities?

Indeed, with solid place-based, home price data like Cortright’s, we now have information one could “take to the bank” in the form of “smart growth” underwriting standards to push qualified projects to the front of the line for speedy loan approval.

Experience in the recent boom/bust cycle, and others before it, suggests that local realtors, bank loan officers, city council members, the folks who wittingly or unwittingly built the unsustainable sprawl development we have today, could benefit from the discipline of a strongly recommended—or even mandatory — checklist of more rational, community planning rules. And so too, in the long run, would federal taxpayers if the smart rules became the norm, not — as today they often still are — the exception.

New Urbanism, “smart growth,” aren’t idealistic throwbacks to a lost time, or straws of wishful thinking about the future. They represent economy, affordability, creation of a viable human habitat that can truly serve the needs of 21st century housing markets.

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