The Huffington Post reports that IKEA is planning to build “1,200 houses, as well as shops, cafés and a 350-room hotel covering 26 acres by the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London.”

Thrilled?  Appalled?  Here’s a bit more of the description to wet your insatiable IKEA/urbanism whistle…

The whole site will be surrounded by two waterways, so the idea is to create a “mini Venice”, the developers explained on Thursday. Residents can make the most of their waterside location by using the moorings, water taxi service, and even a floating cocktail bar.

Sounds downright lovely.

But of course, the prospect of IKEA – a company who worships at the alters of function with the inexpensive – comes a whole host of potential issues that clash with the zeitgeist that motivates most lovers of urban space.  Diversity of product and quality being two of the most prominent.   The Pop-Up City blog nicely summarized the internal struggle…

Would the principles, logics and ideas of a multinational company work when copied to urbanism? Does the perfect neighborhood that suits everyone exist? …Is it able to create neighborhoods that are as comfortable, cheap, good-looking and popular with the majority as its furniture?…can IKEA do the same to urbanism as what it did to interior design?

On the other hand, we should conclude that ‘one-size-fits-all urbanism’ will not be good for the variety and attractiveness of cities in general. Imagine the same number of people to live in an IKEA house as owning a Billy cupboard… These neighborhoods are not meant to solve problems or improve the city to some extent. In essence they are there to earn money for the company.

Aside from the blanket skepticism that stems from trying to “earn money”, I recognize and appreciate the initial concerns of this project.  However, I think the trap that many fall into regarding these conversations – conversations we’ve had here about Atlantic Station – is to treat them as either/or instead of as a sliding scale.

“Can IKEA create a comfortable, cheap, good-looking and popular neighborhood?” the Pop Up Blog asks.  I almost guarantee that the answer to this question is a resounding “YES”, especially if you consider the existing context of urbanism we find ourselves around us today .  Most of the urban planning of the late 20th century is so poor that just creating a new, dense urban center with shops and waterfront has the ability to be more comfortable and popular than the wide-scale alternative.  This lack of suitable alternatives gives IKEA better than average odds, even if the end-product is a bit sterile and too cheaply made for some tastes.

Said more plainly, it ain’t Amsterdam, but it doesn’t have to be.

As for the “one-size-fits-all” question, it’s yet to be seen.  Let’s not forget that there are some very important universal principles of urbanism.  These include things like “Everything should be within a 10 minute walk”, or street grids, or mixed use and diversity of housing types.  If IKEA applies these principles correctly and in the context of individual settings, there’s no reason why it should be deemed impossible to overcome sterile, economic siren’s song of efficiency. Of course, this probably isn’t what the author meant by “one-size-fits all”.  But there’s no reason to believe that IKEA needs to plop down the same, exact urban layout where ever it builds a town in order to make money.

Finally, the obvious comparison to IKEA’s interior design business is a great one.  Using it you can ask yourself two important questions:

First, does a neighborhood filled with IKEA buildings feel like a room filled entirely with IKEA products?  Comfortable and homey, but yet oddly sterile? Possibly.  At the same time, are IKEA buildings susceptible to the same real world “hacks” as its furniture?  Almost definitely.

And somewhere in-between the answers to those two analogies is the answer to the question of whether IKEA can make it in the gritty world of neighborhood building.