Lentis/New Urbanism

New Urbanism is an urban planning movement that promotes the development of environmentally friendly, walkable, bikeable, and transit-oriented communities. New Urbanists seek the return of “human-scale” neighborhoods that prioritize the people over automobiles through greater density, mixed-use development, non-Euclidean zoning, accessible public spaces, and a variety of housing & job options. Formed by architects, planners, and laypeople that were dissatisfied with the car-centric suburban sprawl that has characterized post-war towns and cities, the New Urbanist movement has become the largest and most organized opponent of unmitigated suburbia (13).

The Congress for New Urbanism (CNU)

The Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) was founded in 1993 with 19 regional chapters, uniting the movement’s earliest thinkers and advocates into a consolidated front capable of converting New Urbanist ideas into impactful urban change. They are a member-based nonprofit that aims to strengthen communities with better city designs. They educate about best practices and collaborate across multiple disciplines to accelerate change. Their mission is “...making the design of cities, towns, and neighborhoods a part of how we respond to complex societal challenges, realizing their full potential to expand the social, economic, and environmental opportunities available to all members of each community.” Their most recent strategy outlines three main priorities, i.e., reform detrimental regulations, equalize access to affordable urbanism, and response to the rapidly changing climate (12).

Characteristics of New Urbanist Design

Proponents of New Urbanism have brainstormed ideas to transform suburban areas into complete, compact, and connected communities. The following list outlines some examples (9):

Walkable Neighborhoods: Due to the separation of land uses via Euclidean zoning, academic institutions, professional opportunities, and finances, and residential neighborhoods have become isolated from one another. This land use coupled with a lack of public transit forces suburbanites to drive for almost every trip, be it work or leisure. They live a life characterized by isolation, as they shuttle themselves in private cars from their private homes to their private cubicles, only to return home in their private car to repeat the cycle tomorrow. New Urbanists want a neighborhood with housing, shopping, and recreational activities within a five-minute walk. This would not only help the environment by reducing the need for driving and its subsequent pollution, but also create a greater sense of community through the increased human interaction that results from human-scale, walkable neighborhoods.

The “Missing Middle”: Presently, the only options for housing are a single-family lot or an apartment in a large complex. The missing middle refers to the rise of townhouses, cottages, duplexes, and triplexes, etc. These would help those who can’t afford a typical mortgage to live comfortably in a suburb.

New Parking Policies: Current zoning laws require abundant off-street parking, which encourages car travel. Also, the land used in these parking lots could be better purposed as walking paths, parks, or public spaces.

Incremental Real Estate Development: New Urbanists encourage small developers to be in the business of real estate instead of letting the large firms control the market. This helps add a personal element to the community and allows entrepreneurs to grow their wealth.

Mixed-Use Urban Centers: Office parks should be transformed into town centers with a variety of shopping/dining options, so workers don’t feel trapped. This would also help reduce driving, since workers can run an errand two floors down from their office.

Prioritizing People: Architecture should be thought of as a part of a symphony instead of just a single entity. It shouldn’t be designed to get attention, but instead to work with everything around it and help improve people’s lives. This mindset shift helps create a harmonious community that people will want to walk around in.

Green Infrastructure: Embrace the “less is more” mindset. This can be accomplished by building a taller building on a smaller piece of land, using less non-permeable materials in roadway design, and creating public parks.

Freeway Removal: It is feasible to transform some freeways to surface streets, meaning they are at-grade with the surrounding land. Many people also campaign to halt any future development of freeways and invest in other transportation options.

Public Transportation: This helps reduce carbon emissions from cars and land use for parking lots. Accessible and reliable public transit is the foundation of any town prioritizing new urbanism principles.

Sociability: Lastly, new urbanism promotes sociability of public spaces. The idea here is that there are places to gather in a centralized Ampitheater or park where events like live music or farmers markets can be held that draw people out and together into central public, social spaces (13).

Background on New Urbanism

At a time when a growing disenchantment with suburbia and a growing frustration with the design of cities around cars, new urbanism was a design response that aspired to break the mold. By creating walkable streets with mixed use neighborhoods greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced due to reduced reliance on cars (3). Also, one of the pillars of new urbanism is to provide equal access to green spaces with a focus on bringing green spaces into urban environments (13). This has many benefits such as combating heat island effects that are a result of man-made materials absorbing large amounts of heat. This contributes to higher daytime temperatures and reduced nighttime cooling, both of which can exacerbate air pollution levels in urban areas. So, incorporating more green space can help manage those heat island effects and provide relief from the warmer urban environments when these green spaces take the form of parks and larger green space areas (2).

Examples of New Urbanism

New Urbanist developments—to varying degrees—apply these principles to their urban designs. These newbuild communities can be found in across much of the United States and has influenced development trends in Europe, Canada, Australia, and beyond. New Urbanist developments vary as much in design as in geographic distribution. While all New Urbanist communities aim to mitigate the sprawl and car-dependency seen in the post-war suburb, the extent of this mitigation varies from car-lite to near car-free neighborhoods. On the former end, there are towns like Kentlands, Maryland. While certainly more walkable and bikeable than neighboring suburban subdivisions, its lack of mixed-use, absence of public transit, economic entry restrictions, and presence of a suburban shopping mall results in a subdivision not significantly dissimilar from the car-dependent suburbs that New Urbanism seeks to supplant (6). On the other hand, there are communities like Jakriborg within the town of Hjärup, Sweden. Built in stages throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Jakriborg is situated adjacent to a commuter rail line running between two of Sweden’s largest cities, Malmö and Lund. The town itself consists of cobbled streets lined with a mix of single-family townhouses and low-rise apartments, many of which feature local shops and businesses on their ground floors (7). Many residents do own cars; however, they are relegated to a small parking lot obscured by vegetation on the western end of the neighborhood (7). New Urbanist developments—particularly those in the United States—have followed the example set by Kentlands rather than Jakriborg, leading many architects and planners to criticize New Urbanism for failing to address mobility and social equity problems in suburbia.

Implementing New Urbanism

Local governments have a lot of say about whether or not to incorporate new urbanism concepts into their masterplans. Tools at their disposal for incorporating or discouraging new urbanism projects include zoning and permitting and allocating or restricting funding for transportation projects. Planners also take on the responsibility of educating the community and facilitating community involvement in new urbanism designs. And lastly, local community input is yet another way new urbanism can make its way in a city's comprehensive plan or not.

Criticism of New Urbanism

Some criticisms of new urbanism are that it’s over hyped and this can be because in places where new urbanism is brought to fruition, the execution falls flat. Which some think is the case with a suburb of Denver, Colorado called Central Park. Central Park, formerly known as Stapleton, underwent large scale redevelopment with new urbanism at the core of the design. However, after the project’s completion Central Park reported higher road speeds, less bikes lanes and fewer public transportation users than many other parts of the city. New urbanism isn’t a solution for every town or city and simply doesn’t make sense in areas where people value more privacy and space. Furthermore, as a city grows or develops, imposing new urbanism on future plans may disrupt the natural growth and development, and may cause issues down the line instead of providing improvements (8). One final criticism of new urbanism is that some projects can seem cookie-cutter, or over manicured and staged. An example of this is Seaside, Florida where the town was actually the set of the 1998 film, the Truman Show (3).

Sources

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