New Urbanism

New urbanism is a collective term for an array of planning and design practices originally developed to respond to dissatisfaction with contemporary urbanization processes, especially those linked to urban sprawl. This dissatisfaction included the separation of land uses (a precept of traditional zoning), the domination of daily life by the automobile, and the loss of a sense of community. New urbanism has been seen optimistically by some commentators as an answer to problems of giantism and a lack of attention to environmental and economic sustainability. In the early 21st century, new urbanism has become well known as one possible response to the impacts of automobile-driven suburbanization, edge cities, and alienation. It is, however, not without its critics, who have seen new urbanism as a veneer over the organization of space of capitalism that replicates race and class divisions within contemporary society, even as it embeds them in a utopian vision of communities of the future. These critics, many of whom are geographers, have cast doubt on the progressive visions of some advocates of new urbanism. It should be stated at the outset that new urbanism has evolved as a complex and nuanced phenomenon. Its status in contemporary urbanization processes continues that evolution.

The formal concept and practices of new urbanism developed in the United States during the past 25 years or so. The genesis occurred mainly in the professional practice of a small number of architects and designers struggling to overcome the perceived negative impacts of modernist land use planning and design. New urbanism has become an important facet of urban design and architecture and visions of contemporary community development. Indeed, advocates for, and practitioners of, new urbanism have influenced zoning and subdivision ordinances at the municipal scale. By the late 1990s, this influence had extended to the enabling legislation for planning and development in many states and had permeated federal urban policy in the context of both housing and urban redevelopment. New urbanism in a variety of guises has also become a feature of development and redevelopment processes in other core countries in the world economy.

Geographers and other social and behavioral scientists have been drawn into renewed and energetic discussions of the relationship between physical design[Page 335] and the processes by which people simultaneously create places and are influenced by them. In addition to these discussions, new urbanism has attracted attention in the academic literature of several other disciplines and in popular literature. Popular media have included several books and articles in widely read magazines. Peter Katz's book The New Urbanism, James Howard Kunstler's book The Geography of Nowhere, articles and discussions in The Atlantic Monthly and Time, and a cover story in a 1995 edition of Newsweek all are good examples of the latter trend. Whereas myriad developments in the United States and other countries are associated with new urbanism design principles, one community—Seaside Florida—attained iconic status when it formed the backdrop for the feature film The Truman Show.