There's a debate brewing on an Architect magazine post by Jeff Speck. Because the website comments are down right now, I'm posting my response here, and will post there later when the site is back up:

To Anonymous' charges of "fake" and "dishonest," I'd strongly suggest that's exactly backwards. Living building traditions developed over time as collected wisdom of the best ways of building in a particular place, according to the regional conditions, climate, and culture.

Modernism, as a wide-ranging collection of largely personal styles, is unified by nothing so much as its desire (sometimes stated, more often implicit) to be anti-traditional. In a rainy climate, the most efficient way of getting water off the roof is a simple hip or gable... which means that a self-respecting Mod will build almost any strange or even bizarre roof form... anything except a simple hip or gable.

It's the Mods, if anyone is, who are being dishonest and fake, by attempting to pretend that all sorts of phenomenon don't exist, such as the law of gravity, the laws of thermodynamics, the local weather, and even the desires of the humans that inhabit their buildings. The New Urbanists' great sin has been simply allowing architecture that reflects the cultures of the places in which it was built. I know the founders of the NU, and they have almost all advocated long and hard for Modernist buildings in NU places to balance the scales, but when you open the doors by allowing people to build something worthy of their love, that's most likely what they'll do. Very few people are willing to suffer by building and then living in the unlovable. Only a Mod or their acolytes would typically do that.