32 
improved transportation facilities can vastly expand the income 
range of potential residents. Eichler and Kaplan tend to oversimplify 
the impact of new communities by disregarding the development’s 
effects on surrounding areas. Strategically located new communities 
can have a significant impact on existing central city areas through 
the filtering process in housing, the attraction of new employment 
opportunities to the region, and the development of prototypical 
solutions and technologies that can be applied in the inner city. 
Criticism No. 2: Public funds would only go to help finance poor 
investments—To the private developer a ‘“‘good’’ investment is one 
that produces a high rate of return (in relation to the degree of risk) 
during the development period which in the case of new communities 
may be anywhere from 10-20 years. The success of the project after 
that point is of little concern—except in so far as the developer has 
an equity interest in leased properties. However, from the public 
point of view, an investment is considered over a longer time span 
because of the continual costs that must be borne in the provision 
of public services and facilities. Frequently public investments are 
made for their long-range or secondary effects rather than their 
short-range viability. If a public commitment to build new com- 
munities can lead to the prevention of a major transportation crisis 
in our central cities, then the decision would be justified in the eyes 
of a public agency or authority, even if the investment would be 
viewed as a poor one in the short run by a private developer. 
Criticism No. 3: New communities do not achieve any valuable social 
objectwes.—Privately developed new communities (there have not 
been any publicly developed new communities in recent years)* 
have been able to achieve critical social goals (providing low-income 
housing, increasing the job base of the region, maximizing open 
space) only in so far as these goals coincide with the private de- 
veloper’s objective of making as high a profit as possible on his 
investment. Several new communities have been able to maximize 
public open space through careful planning, to increase the employ- 
ment base in the area, as well as to improve the educational and 
cultural facilities. But these are often improved. by sacrificing other 
equally significant objectives—more lower income housing, greater 
income integration and innovations in housing and. transport tech- 
nology. Clearly the private developer is under a constraint to provide 
only what will be marketable or profitable. This is no reason, how- 
ever, to condemn the entire concept of new communities as being 
incapable of achieving social goals. On the contrary, it merely indi- 
cates that the private market as it is currently structured is not 
capable of maximizing the broad range of social goals that could be 
achieved through increased public involvement. 
_ The private community. builders have traditionally begun. their 
involvement with the purchase (or prior ownership) of large parcels of 
land, Then they have continued to plan their new community given 
the constraints of the market, their financial capabilities, and local 
governmental regulations on land use. There are two critical problems 
inherent in this traditional land-first approach. First, because the 
developer fails to clarify the goals of new community development 
® ‘The planning for several new communities in New Yorb ky the New York State Urban Development 
Corp. seems to indicate that this is the case. 
ae) Yor a history of earlier public efforts in the United States to build new communities see Mary Mullarkey 
i anes of a New Community: Problems of Government,’? Harvard Journal of Legislation, May 
, Dp. 462-495, 
