What is New Urbanism?

New urbanism is an urban design movement whose popularity increased from the beginning of the 1980s onwards. 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. The movement is particularly associated with the USA, with its "rediscovery" of urban patterns, which have had greater continuity in Europe.

At the edge of the neighborhood, there are shops and offices of sufficiently varied types to supply the weekly needs of a household.

Background

Through the first quarter of the 20th century, the United States was developed in the form of compact, mixed-use neighborhoods, much along the line of European cities. The pattern began to change with the emergence of modern architecture, zoning, and the ascension of the automobile with the availability of inexpensive gasoline. 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.

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.

Trends

New urbanism is a reaction to sprawl. For 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 precedent 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, particularly with the urban visions and theoretical models for the reconstruction of the "European" city proposed by architect Leon Krier and with the "pattern language" theories of Christopher Alexander. These 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.

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.

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. Duany and Plater-Zyberk, a husband-wife team, both studied and met each other at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven. While living in one of the Victorian neighborhoods of New Haven, they observed authentic neighborhoods and mixed-use development streetscapes with a tremendous amount of character, corner shops, front porches, and a diversity of well-crafted housing. The experience living in New Haven, one of the most historic cities in the United States, formed the basis of their ideas. An authentic neighborhood contains most of these elements:

• 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.
• Most of the dwellings are within a five-minute walk of the center, an average of roughly 2,000 feet.
• 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.
• At the edge of the neighborhood, there are shops and offices of sufficiently varied types to supply the weekly needs of a household.
• 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).
• An elementary school is close enough so that most children can walk from their home.
• There are small playgrounds accessible to every dwelling—not more than a tenth of a mile away.
• Streets within the neighborhood form a connected network, which disperses traffic by providing a variety of pedestrian and vehicular routes to any destination.
• The streets are relatively narrow and shaded by rows of trees. This slows traffic, creating an environment suitable for pedestrians and bicycles.
• Buildings in the neighborhood center are placed close to the street, creating a well-defined outdoor room.
• Parking lots and garage doors rarely front the street. Parking is relegated to the rear of buildings, usually accessed by alleys.
• 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.
• 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.

This description of new urbanism is copyleft the Wikipedia.