David Byrne on New Urbanism, Burning Down of Houses at CNU 18

If you were in the market for an introduction to the New Urbanism -- what is it for? what is it against? what is it about, really? -- your choices on the opening day of the Congress of the New Urbanism (CNU 18) were either a seven-hour seminar with some of the rock stars of the movement (Andres Duany and Georgia Tech professor Ellen Dunham-Jones) or a deceptively modest 20-minute slide show with an actual rock star, David Byrne.

The polymathic Talking Head has been a critic of sprawl and...