New urbanism
New Urbanism is an urban design movement that emerged in North America during the 1980s as a response to the challenges posed by urban sprawl. This movement advocates for sustainable growth, aiming to reduce negative environmental impacts associated with traditional urban and suburban development, such as habitat destruction, air pollution, and social isolation. Central to New Urbanism is the creation of compact, walkable communities that integrate residential, commercial, and recreational spaces, promoting a lifestyle less dependent on automobiles.
The movement gained momentum with the development of Seaside, Florida, which exemplified the principles of New Urbanism by featuring pedestrian-friendly design and a mix of building types. Founders Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk later established the Congress for the New Urbanism to further these ideals. New Urbanism emphasizes the importance of community and environmental sustainability, with designs that include parks, mixed-use developments, and public gathering spaces, all aimed at fostering social interaction and reducing land consumption.
While many projects have successfully incorporated these principles, challenges remain, including cultural preferences for car usage and legal opposition to high-density developments. Despite criticism regarding the prioritization of aesthetics over environmental effectiveness, New Urbanism has gained traction as a reform movement, spurring collaboration between urban planners and environmental advocates to promote sustainable urban growth.
On this Page
Subject Terms
New urbanism
DEFINITION: Urban design movement that emphasizes sustainable growth
The growing movement of new urbanism aims to reduce the negative environmental impacts of urban and suburban development while improving the quality of life for city residents.
The movement known as new urbanism commenced during the 1980s in North America in response to urban sprawl. It had become clear to some developers, urban planners, and architects that outward city development and automobile dependence lead to the destruction of wildlife habitats, air pollution, water scarcity and deteriorating water quality, loss of farmland, high infrastructure costs, racially and ethnically segregated neighborhoods, and the isolation of human beings. In contrast, new urbanism is based on sustainable planning principles that promote compact urban forms and greenfield projects in sparsely populated suburbs and inner-city areas.
New urbanism began with Seaside, Florida, a community created in the early 1980s by developer Robert Davis and architects Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Seaside was designed to resemble a small, pre–World War II town, with walkable communities, a mix of public and private constructions, and civic spaces. In 1993, Duany and Plater-Zyberk helped to found the Congress for the New Urbanism, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting the conservation of natural environments; the rebuilding of neighborhoods and regions into mixed residential, business, and retail developments; and the rediscovery of old communities—such as Boston’s Back Bay, downtown Charleston, South Carolina, and Philadelphia’s Germantown—where social life centers on a courthouse square, public commons, plaza, train station, or main street.
The core principle of new urbanism, community building within a sustainable natural environment, has unfolded on several scales and in several different contexts. New urbanism has come to encompass such varying elements and goals as a regional vision of non-automobile-centric walkable neighborhoods linked to mass-transit lines, towns with distinct centers and edges, compact neighborhoods that preserve farmland and environmentally sensitive areas, mixed land-use planning, public gathering places, infill projects in inner-city neighborhoods, reconstruction of suburban strips, and redevelopment of downtown areas. In the United States many designers, developers, and planners have adopted new urbanist principles in their creation of master plans and design codes. These principles are most frequently implemented in the development of parks and community gardens. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has also selectively incorporated new urbanism principles in the development of public housing projects.
Proponents of new urbanism argue that lower per-person land consumption and reduction in automobile dependence lead to lower environmental impacts by reducing air pollution and the burning of fossil fuels, encouraging local production, and preserving wetlands, woodlands, and animal habitats. Further, high land density and mixed land usage serve to protect hydrologically sensitive areas by preventing land fragmentation and reducing impervious (paved) land surfaces. Studies demonstrate that the successful integration of protection techniques in new urbanist developments can reduce environmental degradation in comparison with traditional suburban developments.
Evaluations of new urbanist projects suggest that many have not yet achieved comprehensive environmental benefits. The absence of employment clusters linked to public transit, the existence of cultural norms that favor auto usage over walking or use of public transit, and the relatively low priority given to watershed-based zoning present major challenges. Some environmentalists have criticized new urbanists as prioritizing architectural characteristics over truly environmentally beneficial strategies. They have encouraged planners, developers, and designers to focus on how communities work as opposed to how communities look. New urbanist proposals that incorporate apartments and condominiums and mixed-use designs also face legal challenges from residents of subdivisions who are opposed to high-density development.
Despite such obstacles, new urbanism continues to be a popular urban reform movement. Some new urbanist planners have joined with environmental groups to spread awareness about and gain support for sustainable urban growth, and private developers and public officials are becoming increasingly aware of the value of applying new urbanist principles.
Examples of Projects and Communities
Established in Florida in 1994 as an antidote to suburban sprawl by Disney, the community of Celebration has walkable streets and downtown, different styles and prices for homes, and many public areas. But the village-like community has drawn criticism for being less than socioeconomically and racially diverse and the buildings allegedly have subpar construction. The Daybreak project near Salt Lake City, Utah, which included more than 8,000 homes as of 2020, was envisioned to have green spaces and community gardens, a public transit rail station, shops, offices, and a school all within a five-minute walk of each single-family home. The goal of the developers is to have the community eventually reach 20,000 residential units. Different from large-scale planned communities, but still of interest to the new urbanists, is the design of smaller living spaces. For example, shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005, a group of new urbanists designed the Katrina Cottages. These 300-square-foot cottages were originally designed for emergency housing, but have contributed to a trend in small-house living.
Bibliography
"The Charter of the New Urbanism." Congress for the New Urbanism, 2024, www.cnu.org/who-we-are/charter-new-urbanism. Accessed 22 July 2024.
"Fact Sheet." Daybreak, 10 Sept. 2020, media.daybreakutah.com/wp-content/uploads/20210121135531/Daybreak‗Fact‗Sheet‗2020.pdf. Accessed 22 July 2024.
“Fastest Growing Cities in the United States—South Jordan.” Daybreak. 27 May 2015, www.daybreakutah.com/whats-happening/press-release/fastest-growing-cities-in-the-united-states-south-jordan/. Accessed 22 July 2024.
Grant, Jill. Planning the Good Community: New Urbanism in Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Haas, Tigran, ed. New Urbanism and Beyond: Designing Cities for the Future. New York: Rizzolli, 2008.
Pilkington, Ed. “How the Disney Dream Died in Celebration.” The Guardian, 13 Dec. 2010, www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/13/celebration-death-of-a-dream. Accessed 22 July 2024.
Platt, Rutherford H., ed. The Humane Metropolis: People and Nature in the Twenty-First-Century City. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.
Steuteville, Robert. “Great Idea: Cottages for Emergency and Permanent Affordable Housing.” Congress for the New Urbanism, 2 Mar. 2017, www.cnu.org/publicsquare/2017/03/02/great-idea-cottages-emergency-and-permanent-affordable-housing. Accessed 22 July 2024.
Talen, Emily. New Urbanism and American Planning: The Conflict of Cultures. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Trudeau, Dan. "New Urbanism as Sustainable Development?" Geography Compass 7.6 (2013): 435–48. Print.
Trudeau, Dan. "A Typology of New Urbanism Neighborhoods." Journal of Urbanism 6.2 (2013): 113–38. Print.