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I was looking through the archives and I couldn't find any threads on the subject of New Urbanism. New Urbanism is an urban design movement which promotes environmentally friendly habits by creating walkable neighborhoods containing a wide range of housing and job types, or essentially building communities that existed prior to WWII. Here is their official website stating their principles Urbanism Principles and a wiki article on the matter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism
So what are your thoughts on it? Also if you know of any developments that are built based upon their principles please share. I will start with the ones that I know off that are in my state.
Try to find one of your "new urbanist" developments without 300 pages of restrictive covenants and an involuntary membership HOA corporation. There is far too much focus on appearance as opposed to function, use, and enjoyment.
Try to find one of your "new urbanist" developments without 300 pages of restrictive covenants and an involuntary membership HOA corporation. There is far too much focus on appearance as opposed to function, use, and enjoyment.
The ones around Toronto are basically the same as "conventional" suburban developments when it comes to that. Demographics are pretty similar to conventional suburban developments too, which is to say fairly diverse and middle class. They're pretty similar to contemporary conventional suburban development, just with a bit more sidewalks, a few mixed use buildings and more back alley loaded garages.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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The most obvious attempt near us lately is Issaquah Highlands, though it has become so spread out that the more expensive homes up high are not really within walking distance of anything. Despite the number of buses serving the park & ride which fills up early each weekday, the congested traffic there demonstrates that people are not walking. I personally prefer where I am, a mile from the nearest business, but where the homes are on large lots and are among the old growth trees.
The ones around Toronto are basically the same as "conventional" suburban developments when it comes to that. Demographics are pretty similar to conventional suburban developments too, which is to say fairly diverse and middle class. They're pretty similar to contemporary conventional suburban development, just with a bit more sidewalks, a few mixed use buildings and more back alley loaded garages.
The most obvious attempt near us lately is Issaquah Highlands, though it has become so spread out that the more expensive homes up high are not really within walking distance of anything. Despite the number of buses serving the park & ride which fills up early each weekday, the congested traffic there demonstrates that people are not walking. I personally prefer where I am, a mile from the nearest business, but where the homes are on large lots and are among the old growth trees.
I also prefer a nice sized lot, and with some space between each house, but that's only because I like to landscape and garden, and I'm a bit of an introvert and prefer to be in my own private yard as to a loud busy park, however many developers today are already building high density houses with virtually no space in between houses, and very small yards, no where big enough for kids to play (I'm assuming most people who live in the suburbs have kids) and where the garage and drive way domenate the front of the house, so if developers are already in favor of this kind of density, I think it would be best to integrate some parks and open spaces, like they do in these "new urbanist" communities. That being said, from satellite pics it seams that from the developments I saw, they don't do a good job of integrating the little corner shops that they advocate, instead they build a little "downtown" that is a bit to far away for the majority of the people to walk to, and even then I think most people don't enjoy caring their groceries around. And they only have one major road that that everyone drives on to get in and out. So I was curious to see if this a trend or are there places where they do in fact work and and integrate commercial, residential, open spaces, and transit well enough that for most things people just walk/bike.
I live under old urbanism (NYC). Also, I grew up under suburbanism (Levitt built tract housing on LI). So I've experience the extremes (well, maybe not if you consider rural the extreme opposite of urban.)
What's considered new urbanism is basically a somewhat more dense suburban topology. It plays to what people say they want from urbanism, but largely doing it with single family houses with some sort of yard and garage. It generally doesn't get away from autocentrism, while making an at least facile attempt a minimizing it. There may be some walkable shopping and other business, but I suspect the residents are still driving to Walmart (or maybe Target) to do their "real" shopping.
In my mind, you can't get real urbanism until you have the density of multifamily housing, with intermixed commercial property. This kind of density doesn't well support living with a car, so you need to have the infrastructure to live without it (meaning well functioning transit.) That takes a lot of money to set up.
Try to find one of your "new urbanist" developments without 300 pages of restrictive covenants and an involuntary membership HOA corporation. There is far too much focus on appearance as opposed to function, use, and enjoyment.
Agreed on both points.
I find the problem of focusing on appearance usually comes from trying to build all at once a simulacra of something that was built incrementally and iteratively. But, of course, appearance is going to take most importance when the goal is the sale, not the use. Once upon a time, a person built a building--commercial, residential or a mix--to fit their specific purpose, and thus was a representation of their needs and preferences. In a master-planned NU community, the commercial buildings aren't bespoke but purpose-agnostic, built as much for a stationery store as a butcher or cafe.
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