In the third part of Wye Island Revisited, Ted Rouse, son of James Rouse and now urban garden planning pioneer, discusses the critical role that jobs play in a local economy for projects like Wye Island to work. Recalling his father’s goal of providing “fit and living housing” for every American within a generation, Ted suggests that employment is the real key for making that a reality.
The Chestertown Spy, in partnership with the Aspen Institute and the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, hosted the discussion at Aspen’s Wye Woods Conference center, to acknowledge the role Rouse’s Wye Island concept played in land conservation history, and to compare it now with contemporary issues facing Queen Anne’s County and other high population centers in the country.
The video is approximately three minutes.
Ken Noble says
Hopefully in the first two segments someone pointed out that the State takeover of Wye Island was a great missed opportunity in what soon became “New Urbanism.” Buying Wye Island did nothing to rebuild many former declining villages like Price, Maryland. Places like Price, upland and inland AND on major rail and highway routes, could still be rebuilt with all of the planning concepts developed by the Rouse Company and the latter “New Urbanists” Andre Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk and others.
Ironically, in the late 1990’s St. Michaels tried to incorporate a new urbanist zoning code, copied directly from Dueny and Plater-Zyberk. There was a strong ‘no growth’ reaction from the newly located retirees, living on their waterfront large lot estates. They did not want “average people” in their midsts. We borrowed that code from St. Michaels and seven years later Chestertown was still dissecting and discussion it. They should have just adopted it outright.
Mr. Rouse is proposing “News From Nowhere” by William Morris. In the end, perhaps that was what was wrong with the Rouse Wye Island plan. It attempted to be too Utopian. The only people with good jobs over here are getting on buses at Kent Narrows at 0515 and going back to D.C. Mr. Rouse makes a great argument that you cannot just build a town on previously accumulated wealth. You need decent jobs, not just tourism industry service work. Who was in the audience, though? Retirees….