To the editor:

I’ve been waiting for someone to comment in this space on the irony of planners championing high density, “new urbanism,” sub- or ex-urban sprawl – walkable communities with stores and services and neighborhood schools (Journal-World, Oct. 20) – while blissfully ignoring, in the central city (an “old urbanism” development), the closing of neighborhood schools, the remodeling of retail stores into drinking establishments, the migration of services to strip malls, and the transformation of single-family residential neighborhoods into rental ghettos.

Surely we should be planning not only – and not even chiefly – for new growth but also for conserving and keeping livable what we have inherited.

Bill Mitchell,

Lawrence