ancient cities

550 New Urbanism
In October 1991, Judy Corbett, executive director
of the Local Government Commission, presented
the Ahwahnee Principles to 100 mayors.
She, Peter Calthorpe, Michael Corbett, Andres
Duany, Peter Katz, Elizabeth Moule, Elizabeth
Plater-Zyberk, Stephanos Polyzoides and Steve
Weissman wrote the principles, which describe
resource-efficient communities. New urbanists
then realized that they must set out their own principles
in full if they were to wield influence. The
Seaside Institute, founded in 1992, provided an
early venue for sharing tools and information. The
first Congress for the new urbanism in 1993 was
an invitation-only gathering of like-minded professionals.
It coincided with the publication of Peter
Katz’s book, The New Urbanism, which described
and illustrated the movement’s principles. In this
seminal publication of the new urbanism, Katz and
Vincent Scully defined the terms of the new urbanism.
The CNU emulated the Congrès International
d’Architecture Moderne, which promulgated modernism
in the mid-twentieth century. The CNU’s
Charter of the New Urbanism, adopted in 1996,
refashioned and extended the Ahwahnee Principles.
It sought to reverse disinvestment in cities, shape
regions, preserve open space, and make transportation
more efficient. The charter was also more
explicit in its call for a neighborhood structure that
is sensitive to history and the landscape.
New urbanist principles put a high priority on
the repair of existing urbanism, a fact often overlooked
by critics. DPZ’s Stuart Florida Redevelopment
Master Plan and its Mashpee Commons
redevelopment in Mashpee, Massachusetts, date to
the 1980s. By their very nature, such urban redevelopments
were incremental. By the mid 1990s, however,
terms such as brownfield and greyfield were
entering common usage, and transit-oriented design
had become well known (especially through Michael
Bernick and Robert Cervero’s 1997 book, Transit
Villages in the 21st Century). Urban extensions,
such as DPZ’s Cornell in Ontario and Stapleton in
Denver, designed by Peter Calthorpe and Cooper
Robertson (breaking ground in 1997 and 2001,
respectively), joined the older, pioneering large
infill developments on unused or underused land,
such as Harbor Town in Memphis, Tennessee, by
Looney Ricks Kiss. It had broken ground in 1989.
New urbanists’ interdisciplinary collaboration
continues. The number of New Urban developments
has increased steadily from the mid-1980s, and
most of them have required some form of variance
from zoning or a revision to conventional specialists’
standards. New urbanists have collaborated
across disciplines to effect reforms—first on a
project-driven basis and then through CNU initiatives
and summits. HOPE VI, a U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) standard
for restructuring its housing projects, followed
a proposal by the CNU. HUD adopted it
under Henry Cisneros in 1996. (Secretary Cisneros
is a signatory to the charter.) Beginning in 2001,
the CNU began to hold specialized councils on
issues such as transportation, green building, and
retail. It has also pursued joint projects. Two current
ones are Context-Sensitive Solutions in
Designing Major Urban Thoroughfares for Walkable
Communities—a CNU/Institute of Transportation
Engineers–proposed recommended practice released
in draft form in 2006—and the U.S. Green Building
Council’s (USGBC) LEED for Neighborhood
Development rating system, which entered its pilot
phase in 2007.
Smart growth and the new urbanism have
worked toward the same goals. In 1996, Harriet
Tregoning of the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency helped organize the Smart Growth
Network—an umbrella network of environmental,
preservation, and development groups as well as
state and local governments. The CNU helped to
seed Smart Growth America (SGA) in 2000, which
has taken up many of the policy initiatives and
political positions imperative to good urbanism.
These organizations share the same intent and
techniques as the new urbanism but tend to be
policy oriented and government initiated rather
than market oriented and developer initiated.
After Hurricane Katrina, the CNU brought
about 140 architects, planners, and engineers to
the Mississippi Renewal Forum under the auspices
of the Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding, and
Renewal. The movement’s unusual cohesion
allowed it to respond quickly. Just six weeks after
the storm, the CNU convened about 50 local public
officials and local professionals to plan for rebuilding
11 cities and towns. Many Gulf Coast communities
have adopted or calibrated SmartCodes as that
forum proposed, and a parallel planning process
was sponsored by the Louisiana Recovery Authority.
At the same time, several new urbanist architects