New Urbanism

New urbanism is an urban design movement whose popularity increased beginning in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The goal of new urbanists is to reform all aspects of real estate development and urban planning. These include everything from urban retrofits, to suburban infill.

There are some common elements of new urbanist design. New urbanist neighborhoods are walkable, and are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs. New urbanists support regional planning for open space, appropriate architecture and planning, and the balanced development of jobs and housing. They believe these strategies are the best way to reduce the time people spend in traffic, to increase the supply of affordable housing, and to rein in urban sprawl. Many other issues, such as historic preservation, safe streets, green building, and the renovation of brownfield land are also covered in the Charter of the New Urbanism, the movement's seminal document. Because new urbanist designs include many of the features (like mixed use and emphasis on walkability) which characterized urban areas in the pre-automobile age, the movement is sometimes known as Traditional neighborhood design.

About new urbanism

(Adapted from "The New Urbanism: An alternative to modern, automobile-oriented planning and development" by Robert Steuteville, editor and publisher, New Urban News, 2004.)

Background

Through the first quarter of the 20th century, the United States was developed in the form of compact, mixed-use neighborhoods. The pattern began to change with the emergence of modern architecture and zoning and ascension of the automobile. After World War II, a new system of development was implemented nationwide, replacing neighborhoods with a rigorous separation of uses that has become known as conventional suburban development, or sprawl. The majority of US citizens now live in suburban communities built in the last 50 years.

Although conventional suburban development has been popular, it carries a significant price. Lacking a town center or pedestrian scale, conventional suburban development spreads out to consume large areas of countryside even as population grows relatively slowly. Automobile use per capita has soared, because a motor vehicle is required for the great majority of household and commuter trips.

Those who cannot drive are significantly restricted in their mobility. The working poor living in suburbia spend a large portion of their incomes on cars. Meanwhile, the American landscape where most people live and work is dominated by strip malls, auto-oriented civic and commercial buildings, and subdivisions without much individuality or character.

Trends

The new urbanism is a reaction to sprawl. A growing movement of architects, planners, and developers, new urbanism is based on principles of planning and architecture that work together to create human-scale, walkable communities. New urbanists take a wide variety of approaches—some work exclusively on infill projects, others focus on transit-oriented development, still others are attempting to transform the suburbs, and many are working in all of these categories. New urbanism includes traditional architects and those with modernist sensibilities. All, however, believe in the power and ability of traditional neighborhoods to restore functional, sustainable communities. Early in the 1960s, Jane Jacobs authored The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which set the precendent for the new urbanist trend by condemning the accepted planning theories of the time; calling for an increased effort by planners to reconsider the failing single-use housing projects, large car-dependent thoroughfares, and segregated commercial centers that had become the "norm" of civic planning and zoning thought. Another mid-twentieth century writer that inspired the new urbanist movement was the social philosopher/historian Lewis Mumford, who criticized the "anti-urban" development of post-war America.

Today's popular trend of new urbanism had its roots in the work of maverick architects, planners, and theorists, like Jacobs, who believed that the conventional planning thought was gradually failing in one way or another. In the 1970s and 1980s, these new ideas emerged, and eventually coalesced into a unified group in the 1990s. From modest beginnings, the trend is beginning to have a substantial impact. More than 600 new towns, villages, and neighborhoods are planned or under construction in the U.S., using principles of new urbanism. Additionally, hundreds of small-scale new urban infill projects are restoring the urban fabric of cities and towns by reestablishing walkable streets and blocks.

On the regional scale, new urbanism is having a growing influence on how and where metropolitan regions choose to grow. At least 14 large-scale planning initiatives are based on the principles of linking transportation and land-use policies and using the neighborhood as the fundamental building block of a region.

In Maryland and several other states, new urbanist principles are an integral part of smart growth legislation.

Moreover, new urbanism is beginning to have widespread impact on conventional development. Mainstream developers are adopting new urban design elements such as garages in the rear of houses, neighborhood greens and mixed-use town centers. Projects that adopt some principles of new urbanism but remain largely conventional in design are known as hybrids.

Old and new urbanism

The new urbanism trend goes by other names, including neotraditional design, transit-oriented development, and traditional neighborhood development. Borrowing from urban design concepts throughout history, new urbanism does not, and cannot merely replicate old communities. New houses within neighborhoods, for example, must provide modern living spaces and amenities that consumers demand (and that competing suburban tract homes offer). Stores and businesses must have sufficient parking, modern floor plans, and connections to automobile and pedestrian traffic, and/or transit systems.

With proper design, large office, light industrial, and even "big box" retail buildings can be situated in a walkable new urbanist neighborhood. Parking lots, the most prominent feature of conventional commercial districts, are accommodated to the side, the rear or basement of new urban businesses. The size of lots are reduced through shared parking, on-street parking, and shifts to other modes of transportation.

Another difference between old and new urbanism is the street grid. Most historic cities and towns in the US employ a grid that is relentlessly regular. New urbanists often use a "modified" grid, with "T" intersections and street deflections to calm traffic and increase visual interest.

That blending of old and new is the basis of the adjective neotraditional, a term that carries a lot of baggage, especially with modernists, who see it as an architectural "style." However, it is more of an urban design approach that borrows from the past while adapting to the present and future. The very fact that new urbanists must meet the demands of the marketplace keeps them grounded in reality. Successful new urbanism performs a difficult balancing act by maintaining the integrity of a walkable, human-scale neighborhood while offering modern residential and commercial "product" to compete with conventional suburban development. New urbanists who cannot compete with conventional development or find a niche that is poorly served by the real estate industry are doomed to failure.

The difficulty of that balancing act is one reason why many developers choose to build hybrids, instead of adopting all of the principles of new urbanism. Some new urbanists think that hybrids pose a serious threat to the movement, because they usually borrow the label and language of the new urbanism. Other new urbanists believe that hybrids represent a positive step forward from conventional suburban development.

Defining elements

The heart of new urbanism is in the design of neighborhoods, which can be defined by 13 elements, according to town planners Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, two of the founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism. An authentic neighborhood contains most of these elements:

1. The neighborhood has a discernible center. This is often a square or a green and sometimes a busy or memorable street corner. A transit stop would be located at this center. 2. Most of the dwellings are within a five-minute walk of the center, an average of roughly 2,000 feet. 3. There are a variety of dwelling types—usually houses, rowhouses and apartments—so that younger and older people, singles and families, the poor and the wealthy may find places to live. 4. At the edge of the neighborhood, there are shops and offices of sufficiently varied types to supply the weekly needs of a household. 5. A small ancillary building or garage apartment is permitted within the backyard of each house. It may be used as a rental unit or place to work (for example, office or craft workshop). 6. An elementary school is close enough so that most children can walk from their home. 7. There are small playgrounds accessible to every dwelling—not more than a tenth of a mile away. 8. Streets within the neighborhood form a connected network, which disperses traffic by providing a variety of pedestrian and vehicular routes to any destination. 9. The streets are relatively narrow and shaded by rows of trees. This slows traffic, creating an environment suitable for pedestrians and bicycles. 10. Buildings in the neighborhood center are placed close to the street, creating a well-defined outdoor room. 11. Parking lots and garage doors rarely front the street. Parking is relegated to the rear of buildings, usually accessed by alleys. 12. Certain prominent sites at the termination of street vistas or in the neighborhood center are reserved for civic buildings. These provide sites for community meetings, education, and religious or cultural activities. 13. The neighborhood is organized to be self-governing. A formal association debates and decides matters of maintenance, security, and physical change. Taxation is the responsibility of the larger community.

Examples

Seaside, Florida, the first new urbanist town, began development in 1981 on 80 acres (324,000 m²) of Florida Panhandle coastline. Seaside appeared on the cover of the Atlantic Monthly in 1988 when only a few streets were completed, and it since became internationally famous for its architecture and the quality of its streets and public spaces. Seaside proved that developments that function like traditional resort towns could be built in the postmodern era. Lots began selling for $15,000 in the early 1980s and, slightly over a decade later, lots prices had escalated to about $200,000. Today, most lots sell for more than a million dollars, and houses sometimes top $5 million. The town is now a tourist mecca.

Seaside’s influence has less to do with its economic success than the attractiveness and dynamism related to its physical form. Many developers have visited Seaside and gone away determined to build something similar.

Since Seaside gained recognition, other new urban towns and neighborhoods have been designed and are substantially built—including Legacy Town Center in Plano, Texas; Haile Village Center in Gainesville, Florida; Harbor Town in Memphis, Tennessee; Kentlands in Gaithersburg, Maryland; King Farm in Rockville, Maryland; Addison Circle in Addison, Texas; Orenco Station in Hillsboro, Oregon; Mashpee Commons in Mashpee, Massachusetts; The Cotton District in Starkville, Mississippi; Celebration and Avalon Park in Orlando, Florida; Cherry Hill Village in Canton, Michigan, Baxter Village (www.villageofbaxter.com) in Fort Mill, SC, and the redevelopment of Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado.

Designers are also using the principles of new urbanism to build major new projects in cities and towns. In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) adopted the principles of the new urbanism in its multibillion dollar program to rebuild public housing projects nationwide. New urbanists have planned and developed hundreds of projects in infill locations. Most were driven by the private sector, but many, including HUD projects, used public money. New urbanist projects built in historic cities and towns includes Crawford Square in Pittsburgh, City Place in West Palm Beach, Highlands Garden Village in Denver, Park DuValle in Louisville, and Beerline B in Milwaukee.

The United States is by no means alone in the "new urbanism" shift, (though it is important to note most of the fundamental ideas stem from European urban design), the river city of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia is also experimenting with small more commercialised developments such as Emporium, (a living, shopping, dining mecca). As well as large scale initiatives such as Kelvin Grove Urban Village, [1], a University/College, medium and high resedential living with retail suiting all age groups and budgets.

Congress for New Urbanism

Meanwhile, leaders in this design trend came together in 1993 to form the Congress for the New Urbanism, based in Chicago. The founders are Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Peter Calthorpe, Daniel Solomon, Stefanos Polyzoides, and Elizabeth Moule, all practicing architects and town planners. The Congress for the New Urbanism has since grown to more than 2,000 members and is now the leading international organization promoting new urbanist design principles.

Disney builds a town

In June of 1996, Disney unveiled its 5,000 acre (20 km²) town of Celebration, near Orlando, Florida, and it has since eclipsed Seaside as the best-known new urbanist community. In some respects, the new urbanism and Disney have been uncomfortable bedfellows. While using designers and principles closely associated with the new urbanism, Disney has shunned the label, preferring to call Celebration simply a "town." Meanwhile, the movement may have benefited from all of Celebration’s publicity—but not without a price. Disney has come under attack for what some perceive as heavy-handed rules and management. For those who would attack new urbanism as insipid nostalgia, Disney is a fat target. The fact remains that Celebration’s urban design is generally of high quality and by most accounts serves residents very well.

In the 1991 book Edge City, author Joel Garreau wrote that Americans have not built "a single old-style downtown from raw dirt in 75 years." Celebration was one of the first real estate projects to break that trend, opening its downtown in October, 1996; Seaside's downtown was still mostly unbuilt at the time. (It could be argued that Reston Town Center, opened in 1990 near Garreau's home in Washington, D.C., could qualify.) Since then, scores of new urban projects have followed suit with their own downtowns and mixed-use districts.
Criticisms

New urbanism is in part a reform movement and, as such, has drawn criticism from all quarters of the political spectrum. Some members of right wing view new urbanism as a collectivist plot designed to rob Americans of their civil freedoms, property rights and free-flowing traffic. Some members of the left wing view new urbanism as an example of capitalistic excess, aligned with forces of greed that would purge the underclass from urban areas for the benefit of the gentrifying elite. Some environmentalists decry new urbanism as nothing more than conventional sprawl dressed up with superficial stylistic cues, while NIMBY activists routinely argue against new urbanism as being too dense, with too much mixed use and around-the-clock activity.

Critics of new urbanism often accuse it of elevating aesthetics over practicality, subordinating good city planning principles to urban design dogma. Another charge is that the movement is grounded in nostalgia for a period in American history that may never have existed. A related charge is that the movement represents nothing truly new, as towns and neighborhoods were built on similar principles in the U.S. until the 1920s. However, perhaps the most frequent criticism of the movement is that some of the highest-profile projects—such as Celebration, Seaside, and The Glen in Glenview, Illinois—represent a form of sprawl themselves, in that they are built on what was previously open space. According to New Urban News, new urbanist developments as a group are approximately one-half infill and one-half greenfield land.

A stream of thought in sustainable development maintains that sustainabilty is primarily based on the combination of high density and transit service. To the extent that many new urbanist developments rely on automobile transport and serve the detached single family housing market, critics claim they fall short of being truly sustainable. However, a forthcoming rating and certification scheme for neighborhood environmental design, LEED-ND, should help to quantify the sustainability of New Urbanist neighborhood design; it is being developed by a partnership between the US Green Building Council, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Congress for the New Urbanism.

Beyond cursory levels, say critics, the provision for cultural and social interchange in new urbanist towns is limited, and the permanent residential populations of new urbanist resort communities are comparatively small and culturally homogeneous. Critics claim that new urbanism is somewhat incomplete: while providing a basic framework for the improvement of the civic landscape, it does not entirely provide for the diversity necessary for city success. Critics call into question whether or not towns and cities are objects that can be "created," or whether they are, in fact, the results of a process of cultural, social, political and religious interaction that the new urbanists seek to accelerate and simulate, in order to make their towns more palatable to their predominantly affluent (and, some argue, nostalgic) clientele.

To date, new urbanists have captured only a few percent of the residential market. The conventional suburban development retail model, particularly the strip mall format, presents a formidable challenge to the new urbanist ideal of walkable town centers. Critics charge that new urbanist developers must get better at making their neighborhoods affordable, and prove that their ideas are superior for both revitalizing and recovering old cities, towns and building new communities.