New Urbanism Is Ideal for Infill Development and Planned Communities

New urbanism is a design theory, practice, and movement that aims to restore principles of traditional neighborhood development (TND). Although new urbanist thought may influence urban design in established communities, its application lies in either building infill developments of a significant size and scale, or in building new planned communities on greenfields. Greenfields is a term for land that hasn't been developed previously.

Our point of view is very supportive of traditional neighborhood development, when executed in full. On the other hand, it's not especially good in the Chinese menu approach, where we pick and choose from various design theories and cobble together a new development.

Just as in typical development, somehow developers find it easier to start with a blank slate and not worry about any lingering utilities, contamination, and building fragments from the previous iteration of the built environment.

Description of a New Urbanist Development

As an architectural and urban planning reform movement that began to crystallize in the early 1990s in the U.S., new urbanism advocates mixed use development, walkable communities, diversity in housing and jobs, and traditional neighborhood design principles including a grid of narrow streets with prominent street termination points reserved for civic space.

You may have heard of Seaside, Florida, an early and full expression of new urbanist theory. It was in the movie "The Truman Show."

Other prominent characteristics that visitors may notice immediately commonly include:

• A definable town center

• Emphasis on front porches and outdoor communal space for meeting neighbors in general

• Variety of dwelling types and sizes, including great-looking apartments and row houses. The apartments might be four in a building, for instance, with a giant front porch accessible to all.

• Garages and alleys in the rear of homes

• Private lawn area de-emphasized in favor of common space

• "Live-work units," usually consisting of a storefront or office space on the first floor with living space for the proprietor above

• General attempt to balance jobs and population within the development

• Small setbacks, especially for the front yard, and a compact development pattern in the majority of the space. Community parks, open space, or gardens may be shared along the fringes. Small playgrounds are sited at closer intervals.

• Small-scale grocery outlets and other businesses

• Accessory units (which you might know as carriage houses, alley houses, granny flats, or mother-in-law quarters) are encouraged

• Often shared places of worship, and shared multi-purpose governmental and community space

• Sound environmental practices, including brownfield re-use and encouraging transit use

• A mix of rental and for sale housing, and large and small housing units, blended artfully into an urban design whole

• Careful attention to aesthetics at the street level, frequently enforced through numerous covenants. The code often is based on the architecture of the region. (It's a perversion, for instance, to find tin roofs in the new urbanist developments in the Midwest, copying the tin roofs in old Florida.) For example, mailboxes may be grouped at a gathering point or strictly regulated in their curbside appearance. Usually owners must choose from a palette of external colors and sometimes of building elements and materials typical in the local vernacular (common, unschooled) architecture.

The resulting community is designed to minimize automobile travel by providing some jobs, some goods and services, and short walkable distances between community hubs. Some leaders insist that each housing unit be within a five-minute walk of the town center. In practice larger developments may have more than one center.

Larger social goals are at play here. This type of community allows a mix of incomes to live side by side, and a mix of ages. Indeed, specially considered senior housing units often are included. And the entire orientation toward the porch, street, civic spaces, walkability, and shared open spaces is intended to let you know your neighbors and spend time with them. Just like in a traditional neighborhood.

Learn More

Fortunately, since new urbanism is well, new, there is a large but cohesive body of writing on the subject. Begin with the Charter of the New Urbanism. Poke around on the rest of the Congress for the New Urbanism site and at the new urbanism site. Read the writings (or a summary) of Andres Duany and Peter Calthorpe, a couple of the founders, and you'll know plenty.

American Hubris Strikes Again on This Site

We haven't figured out yet what to do about the fact that we want to write an internationally applicable site, and yet all of our authors have only U.S.A. experience. I hope the world with flood us with communication on the Contact Us page, and we hope to learn like crazy. But here the need to acknowledge our parochialism is particularly striking.

Most European cities already are new urbanist in character, except, paradoxically, in newer suburbs. This character, which would be approved by the new urbanist charter, is what makes these cities so delightful to visit.

New Urbanism and Existing Neighborhoods

As a community leader, if someone tells you that new urbanism or traditional neighborhood development is the solution for your three vacant lots or that strip of vacant land along a stream, you know that person doesn't understand new urbanism. Traditional neighborhoods are for substantial size areas and redevelopments.

However, I'd enthusiastically urge you to look into new urbanism if you have vacant buildings and/or land left by the departing university, shopping mall, large apartment complex, or office campus. Former military bases and industrial sites will require clean-up, of course, but you will have to engage in some degree of environmental cleanup (see our brownfields page) anyway.

Here's how to prepare. First, do a modest amount of reading, as explained above. Begin with the Charter of the Congress for the New Urbanism. That plus this page will get you started. Then use your favorite search engine to locate three or four new urbanist developments within a four or five hour drive. (Remember to search traditional neighborhood development, as well as new urbanism and new urbanist). Read about or talk to each, and figure out which one you think is the purest example of new urbanism principles.

Then plan a trip to see that development. If you want to make it just a car-load of interested folks the first time, that’s workable. But eventually you're going to have to get your city council or other decision-makers there to see, feel, walk through, and appreciate the environment.

Because it sounds goofy on paper. And the right wing would attack it as a curtailment of freedom, too many rules, too socialist to have mixed incomes in the same development, and we have to be able to determine the pecking order by how big the house is, don't we?

Don't be afraid of the City Council field trip. Because new urbanism began with architects, most new urbanist communities are big on aesthetics and make a great impression. And because the development type is so drastically different from suburbia, most of the residents are totally sold on the place. So not too much can go wrong if you actually select the most true-to-form new urbanism development in your region, and go there. Of course let them know in advance you're coming, and usually you can get the very important guided tour.

The result of following new urbanism theory is good-looking, but there will be many questions from your planner or city officials about how it was implemented, what kinds of ordinances were required, and how certain problems are handled. You'll want a developer, builder, or architect who has behind-the-scenes knowledge available to answer these questions.

Adapting the Benefits of New Urbanism to Fully Developed Older Neighborhoods

Many neighborhoods in America already are laid out along these lines, and some retrofitting of codes to permit a greater mixing of land uses and subdivision of houses into smaller units could result in much of the benefit of new urbanism. For instance, a house on the corner could be remodeled into a small grocery store and deli. A few houses mid-block might be altered into three-plex units for rent, as opposed to a large single-family home. Streets might be narrowed to provide for landscape elements, rain gardens, or a community gardening project. I even saw one proposal for adding front porches to every residence along a block face.

You can see already how you would need to change zoning codes if you plan to retrofit your neighborhood into more of the new urbanist framework. Zoning permitting commercial and residential land uses in the same building, allowing a greater mix of housing unit types, and allowing smaller setbacks and less parking would be just a few of the changes.

New urbanist developments typically do not have a zoning ordinance at all, but are based on a design charter and covenants of just a few pages in length. In sum, at this time, you need a real expert if you plan to reap some of the benefits of new urbanism in your existing neighborhood. But do some reading and thinking before you hire that expert and talk to a few opinion leaders individually about the likely reception.

Especially in the situation where you may want to choose a few elements of new urbanism to accompany the traditional neighborhood development pattern already existing, it's probably best not to get extreme in educating the entire community about new urbanism. New urbanism can begin to sound like a religion, and the founders and proponents, much as I admire them, go after the subject with religious zeal. Don't get into that if you're going to just borrow a few good ideas. Go about the task quietly.

Many communities have experimented with a traditional neighborhood zoning overlay, for instance. A zoning overlay, or overlay district in general, means that you keep your existing zoning classification, but in all or part of the district, an "overlay" of additional rules applies. So you could add an overlay that says those existing large red brick homes with the wide front porches could be retrofitted into up to three apartments if the exterior is not altered and the central staircase inside is used to access the three units.

Do you see how this could work to allow a range of incomes and ages to live in your community? And to allow you to adapt to changing housing needs and housing markets? It's great stuff.

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