Last week’s New York Times Magazine featured an article by Jim Lewis on Gulf Coast reconstruction, which contained some criticism of the way urban planners have engaged with local and federal officials. The planners brought in by the commision directing the rebuilding in Biloxi Mississippi are proponents of New Urbanism, which advocates for denser, more pedestrian-friendly growth. Some of the problems he pointed out were legitimate; however, at times he over-salted the argument by implying a certain fanaticism of the philosophy’s proponents. Dismissing people as “fanatical” is the coarsest form of argument as it doesn’t address or engage them in anyway. Someone else at the Times must have noticed, because the more balanced article referenced above was published a few days later.