“Any time architects start thinking they can influence social order, watch out,” you quote Richard Reep, an architect from Florida, in connection with Mesa, Arizona, a sprawling new city that is now planning its snazzy downtown from scratch (“City of the Future,” December 6, 2008). Spot on. The notion that people will socialize by walking around carefully designed and tightly built neighborhoods is ludicrous, especially in the harsh Arizona desert. At best, the downtown will become a joke on architects and urban planners, if another joke of this ilk is really needed. For proof, one should visit any of the new towns built around the world since the beginning of the last century, when the craze took off. The only way to avoid such costly errors is to provide the essential infrastructure and then let the social order evolve in its own time.