New Urbanism

New urbanism is a postmodern American urban design and planning movement that began in the 1980s as a challenge to modern urban form and automobile-centered suburban development. The new urbanism movement seeks to redefine the American dream through the creation of walkable neighborhoods modeled after traditional American small towns. Placing the pedestrian at the core of neighborhood design, the movement proclaims a rebirth of sociability, civility, and improvement in public health through walkabil-ity and physical activity long thwarted by the design of conventional suburbia.

The roots of new urbanism converged in 1993 in the Congress for the New Urbanism and can be traced to two distinct urban design perspectives: traditional-neighborhood development (TND) and transit-oriented development (TOD). Both perspectives criticize conventional land use zoning for segregating urban activities and making car travel indispensable resulting in high-energy consumptive lifestyles. In opposition to the proliferation of single-family-home subdivisions devoid of a public realm, sidewalks, and civic amenities, both TOD and TND prescribe the creation of small, walkable neighborhoods with a diverse mix of residences, shops, workplaces, and public facilities reachable within a 5- to 10-minute walk. The two design approaches differ in the way they internally organize development and in the way they articulate the neighborhood with the rest of the urban fabric. TND, which originated on the east coast, is focused on an identifiable town center and laid out on a dense grid of boulevards, narrow streets, alleyways, and plazas. In contrast, TOD, which originated on the west coast, is focused on a transit station to which all major streets converge. In its prototypical formulation, TND commercial and residential blocks are small with small building footprints, where houses with front porches face the street while garages are tucked on alleyways behind houses. TOD is similarly compact in design; however, while TND relies on existing freeways and arterials for metropolitan travel, TOD, organized around transit stations, depends on high-quality transit service for effective substitution of car trips for transit trips—a hallmark of the sustainability claims of the movement.