New Urbanism

New Urbanism is an urban design movement that arose in the United States in the early 1980s as a reaction against postwar suburban sprawl. It revives the planning habits of pre-automobile towns: walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods organized around a clear center, with narrow tree-shaded streets and many housing types side by side. Architects Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk distilled these patterns from older New England neighborhoods while designing Seaside, Florida, and Peter Calthorpe pushed transit-oriented development; Léon Krier's traditional urbanist theory fed the same current. The Congress for the New Urbanism, founded in 1993, codified the approach in its Charter. Beyond layouts, the movement carries an architectural look - New Classical and vernacular styles, porches, and buildings that address the street - and its influence now shapes municipal planning and development worldwide.

Defining characteristics

• Neighborhoods organized around a walkable center - a square, green, or memorable corner, with the transit stop at it
• Houses, rowhouses and apartments mixed together so one neighborhood holds many ages and incomes
• Narrow, tree-shaded streets in a connected grid that slows cars and favors walking and cycling
• Buildings set close to the street with porches and stoops, forming defined outdoor rooms
• Parking hidden to the rear behind alleys; garage doors rarely face the street
• Civic buildings reserved for prominent sites at the ends of street vistas

Key figures

• Andrés Duany (b. 1949) — Planner of Seaside, Florida; co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism
• Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (b. 1950) — Co-designer of Seaside and co-founder of the CNU; leading educator of traditional urbanism
• Peter Calthorpe (b. 1949) — Leading advocate of transit-oriented development
• Léon Krier (b. 1946) — Theorist of traditional urbanism whose master plan shaped Poundbury

Example works

• Seaside, Florida — Andrés Duany & Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (1981)
• Celebration, Florida — The Walt Disney Company (1996)
• Poundbury — Léon Krier (master plan) (1993)

Sources

• New Urbanism - Wikipedia encyclopedia

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