New urbanism

The New urbanism is an American urban design movement that arose in the early 1980s. Its goal is to reform all aspects of real estate development and urban planning, from urban retrofits to suburban infill. New urbanist neighborhoods are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs, and to be "walkable". The New Urbanism also is known as, traditional neighborhood design, neotraditional design, transit-oriented development, and the New Pedestrianism. The ideas of New Urbanism also are embraced by the European Urban Renaissance movement.

The Local Government Commission, a private nonprofit group in Sacramento, California, invited architects Peter Calthorpe, Michael Corbett, Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Moule, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Stefanos Polyzoides, and Daniel Solomon in 1991 to develop a set of community principles for land use planning. Named the Ahwahnee Principles (after Yosemite National Park's Ahwahnee Hotel), the commission presented the principles to about one hundred government officials in the fall of 1991, at its first Yosemite Conference for Local Elected Officials.

Calthorpe, Duany, Moule, Plater-Zyberk, Polyzoides, and Solomon founded the Chicago-based Congress for the New Urbanism in 1993. The CNU has grown to more than 2,000 members, and is the leading international organization promoting new urbanist design principles. It held its fourteenth congress in 2006 in Providence, Rhode Island, which included applying New Urbanist principles to the city.

The CNU's Charter of the New Urbanism says:

New urbanists support regional planning for open space, appropriate architecture and planning, and the balanced development of jobs and housing. They believe their strategies are the best way to reduce traffic congestion, increase the supply of affordable housing, and rein in urban sprawl. The Charter of the New Urbanism also covers issues such as historic preservation, safe streets, green building, and the renovation of brownfield land.

Background

Through the first quarter of the twentieth century, cities in the United States were developed in the form of compact, mixed-use neighborhoods, as in European cities. That pattern began to change with the emergence of modern architecture, zoning codes, and the ascension of the automobile.

A new system of development with a rigorous separation of uses, known as suburban development, or sprawl, arose after World War II. The majority of U.S. citizens now live in suburban communities built in the last fifty years. Suburban development consumes large areas of countryside for a relatively small population, and automobile use per capita has soared.

The suburban working poor must spend a large portion of their incomes on cars, and the mobility of those who cannot drive is significantly restricted in areas without good public transportation. Strip malls, auto-oriented civic and commercial buildings, and subdivisions without much individuality or character dominate the landscape.

The new urbanism is a reaction to sprawl, based on planning and architectural principles working together to create human-scale, walkable communities. It is rooted in the work of architects, planners, and theorists who believed that conventional planning thought was failing.

Social philosopher and historian Lewis Mumford criticized the "anti-urban" development of post-war America. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, written by Jane Jacobs in the early 1960s, called for planners to reconsider the single-use housing projects, large car-dependent thoroughfares, and segregated commercial centers that had become the "norm".

In the 1970s and 1980s, new urbanism emerged with the urban visions and theoretical models for the reconstruction of the "European" city proposed by architect Leon Krier, and the "pattern language" theories of Christopher Alexander. These eventually coalesced into a unified group in the 1990s.

The new urbanism includes traditional architects and those with modernist sensibilities. Some work exclusively on infill projects, others focus on transit-oriented development, some attempt to transform the suburbs, and many work in all these categories. All believe in the power and ability of traditional neighborhoods to restore functional, sustainable communities.

New urbanist developments are purchased quickly by interested home buyers, but have captured only a small share of the residential market. Developers continue to build conventional suburban projects, because they are more familiar with the conventional suburban development retail model, particularly the strip mall format.

Defining elements

The husband-wife team of town planners Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, two of the founders of the Congress for the New Urbanism, met at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven. While living in one of New Haven's Victorian neighborhoods, they observed mixed-use streetscapes with corner shops, front porches, and a diversity of well-crafted housing. According to Duany and Plater-Zyberk, the heart of new urbanism is in the design of neighborhoods, which can be defined by thirteen 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, an 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.

Old and new urbanism

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The new urbanism does not, and cannot, merely replicate old communities. Successful new urbanism maintains the integrity of a walkable, human-scale neighborhood, while offering a modern residential and commercial "product" competitive with conventional suburban development.

The demands of the marketplace keep new urbanists grounded in reality. For example, new houses within neighborhoods must provide the modern living spaces and amenities consumers demand, and that suburban tract homes offer. Stores and businesses must have sufficient parking, modern floor plans, and connections to automobile and pedestrian traffic as well as public 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 are accommodated to the side, the rear or basement of new urban businesses, and made smaller through shared parking, on-street parking, and shifts to other modes of transportation.

New urbanism also is beginning to impact 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 new urbanism principles, but remain largely conventional in design, are known as, hybrids. Some new urbanists think hybrids pose a serious threat to the movement, because they usually borrow the label and language of the new urbanism, creating confusion about the meaning of the terms.

Another difference between old and new urbanism is the street grid. Most historic cities and towns in the U.S. 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.

Examples

Main article: Examples of New Urbanism

U.S.A.

The new urbanism is having a growing influence on how and where metropolitan regions choose to grow. At least fourteen 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.

More than six hundred new towns, villages, and neighborhoods in the U.S. following new urbanism principles, are planned or under construction. Hundreds of new, small-scale, urban and suburban infill projects are restoring the urban fabric of cities and towns, by re-establishing walkable streets and blocks. In Maryland and several other states, new urbanist principles are an integral part of smart growth legislation.

Seaside

Seaside, Florida, the first fully new urbanist town, began development in 1981 on eighty acres (324,000 m²) of Florida Panhandle coastline. It was featured on the cover of the Atlantic Monthly in 1988, when only a few streets were completed, and has become famous internationally for its architecture, and the quality of its streets and public spaces.

Seaside proved that developments that function similarly to traditional resort towns could be built in the postmodern era. Seaside is now a tourist mecca, and appears in the movie The Truman Show .

Lots sold for $15,000 in the early 1980s, and slightly over a decade later, the price had escalated to about $200,000. Today, most lots sell for more than a million dollars, and some houses top $5 million.

Disney's Celebration, Florida

In June of 1996, the Walt Disney Company unveiled its 5,000 acre (20 km²) town of Celebration, near Orlando, Florida. Celebration opened its downtown in October, 1996, while Seaside's downtown was still mostly unbuilt. It has since eclipsed Seaside as the best-known new urbanist community, but Disney shuns the label, calling Celebration simply a "town." Disney has been criticized for insipid nostalgia, and heavy-handed rules and management.

In the mid-1990s, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) adopted the principles of the new urbanism in its multi-billion 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.

Other countries

Europeans may consider a "New Urbanism" project in the USA as simply traditional city planning. In Europe many brown-field sites have been redeveloped since the 1980s following the models of the traditional city neighbourhoods rather than Modernist models, however, the well publicised development of Poundbury in England, a small village owned by Prince Charles, involved a plan designed by Leon Krier, to expand the existing village into a small town. Only small sections of the plan have been carried out, and the new occupants are mostly the wealthy retired.

The river city of Brisbane, Australia, also is 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 [2], a University/College, medium and high residential living area, with retail suiting all age groups and budgets.

A "new urbanist" development called McKenzie Towne was attempted by Carma Developers LP in Calgary, Alberta.

The Alta de Lisboa project, in north Lisbon, Portugal, is one of the largest new urbanist projects in Europe.

The structure plan for Thimphu, Bhutan, follows Principles of Intelligent Urbanism, which share underlying axioms with the New Urbanism.

Criticisms

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—are built on what was previously open space, and therefore, are another form of sprawl. According to New Urban News, new urbanist developments as a group are approximately one-half infill and one-half greenfield land.

Critics accuse the new urbanism of elevating aesthetics over practicality, subordinating good city planning principles to dogma. Some charge 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.

Academics have criticized New Urbanism as retrograde, bordering on fascist.^[1] Some environmentalists decry new urbanism as nothing more than conventional sprawl dressed up with superficial stylistic cues. Some activists argue that the New Urbanism is too dense, with too much mixed use and around-the-clock activity.

Some claim the new urbanism does not entirely provide for the diversity necessary for city success. They say the provision for cultural and social interchange in new urbanist towns is limited, and the permanent residential populations of new urbanist resort communities are small and culturally homogeneous. Critics question whether towns and cities can be "created"; and whether the new urbanists seek to stimulate a process of cultural, social, political, and religious interaction, to make their towns more palatable to their predominantly affluent and nostalgic clientele. It is akin to "bringing downtown to the suburbs." Usually, only less than 2% of the housing in new urbanist neighbourhoods gets sold, while the rest is simply empty.^{[citation needed]} There is also a lot of "social blight" in new urbanist communities as there is usually hardy any people to be seen.^{[citation needed]} The new urbanism usually caters to the "nostalgic rich" and the main form of transportation is still the automobile.

A stream of thought in sustainable development maintains that sustainabilty is based primarily on the combination of high density and transit service. Critics claim many new urbanist developments fall short of being truly sustainable, to the extent that they rely on automobile transport, and serve the detached single family housing market. The new urbanists claim that this is an incentive that prepare people in transition from conventional suburban living to going back to downtown living.^{[citation needed]} Unfortunely, most North Americans still prefer the conventional suburban way of life.

A forthcoming rating and certification scheme for neighborhood environmental design, LEED-ND, being developed by the U.S. Green Building Council, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Congress for the New Urbanism, should help to quantify the sustainability of New Urbanist neighborhood design.

New urbanism has drawn criticism from all quarters of the political spectrum. Some members of the right wing view new urbanism as a collectivist plot designed to rob Americans of their civil freedoms, property rights, and free-flowing traffic. ^[2] 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.^{[citation needed]}

New Ruralism

A similar concept is a rural form of new urbanism called new ruralism. This type of community is designed more like a rural village than a planned town. Features would include clustered development surrounding a village green, with a high percentage of agriculture in and around the neighborhoods. Instead of laying out streets in a grid or in blocks, roads will follow topography of the natural land. Cottage industries, local craftsmanship, and multi-generational vision for families also is an important aspect of new ruralism. A rural village may have common pastures, community gardens, and orchards. Simpler Times Village is an example, a rural community with an Austrian theme planned for central Indiana.

Footnotes

1. ^ (2001) New Urbanism: Comprehensive Report & Best Practices Guide. Ithaca, NY: Robert Steuteville. 
2. ^ "Plan Obsolescence," Reason, , June 1998: [1]

See also

References

• Brooke, Steven (1995). Seaside. Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing Company. ISBN 0-88289-997-X
• Calthorpe, Peter (1993). The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community, and the American Dream. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 1-878271-68-7
• Calthorpe, Peter and William Fulton (2001). The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl. Washington, DC: Island Press. ISBN 1-55963-784-6
• Congress for the New Urbanism (1999). in Leccese, Michael; and McCormick, Kathleen (Eds.): Charter of the New Urbanism. McGraw-Hill Professional. ISBN 0-07-135553-7. 
• Duany, Andres; Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth; & Alminana, Robert (2003). The New Civic Art: Elements of Town Planning. New York: Rizzoli Publications. ISBN 0-8478-2186-2. 
• Duany, Andres; Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth; & Speck, Jeff (2000). Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. North Point Press. ISBN 0-86547-557-1. 
• Dutton, John A. (2001). New American Urbanism : Re-forming the Suburban Metropolis. Milano: Skira editore. ISBN 88-8118-741-8
• El Nasser, Haya. "Miss. Wal-Marts may apply 'new urbanism' in rebuilding", USA Today, November 14 2005.
• Jacobs, Jane (1992). The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN 0-679-74195-X. Originally published: New York: Random House, (1961).
• Katz, Peter (1994). The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-033889-2
• Kunstler, James Howard (1994). Geography Of Nowhere: The Rise And Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-88825-0
• Talen, Emily (2005). New Urbanism & American Planning: The Conflict of Cultures. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-70133-3. 
• Tagliaventi, Gabriele |title=New Urbanism | location=Florence | publisher=Alinea | year=2002 | editor= | id=ISBN 88-8125-602-9

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