I agree completely. Planned communities (top down?) have failed repeatedly (for a variety of reasons). The kind of planning and design I am talking about is the design of local rules (bottom up?), such as the order in which you put cars, parked cars, bycicles (and friends), and peds. Another example would be about the zoning around university campuses and how they interact, or don't with public transportation. The difference between US vs EU for these two cases and the results of the differences is quite revealing.