ancient cities

developed Katrina cottages—a new, modest but
dignified prototype for emergency housing.
Recently, the new urbanism has been entering
the mainstream. Celebration, developed by the
Walt Disney Company in Orlando, Florida, is
arguably the first corporate new urbanist traditional
neighborhood development and is complete
after several phases. In 2004, a high-volume
builder, Whittaker Homes, began development of
New Town at St. Charles, Missouri. The CNU is
growing steadily, and at its 2008 Congress, its new
chairman of the board announced a platform of
green principles that align it even more closely
with European urban movements and with the
smart growth movement.
Values and Characteristics
The new urbanists share a generalized vision of
sustainable metropolitan organization and compact
walkable communities. They operate through
a self-critical peer review process through vehicles
such as congresses, listserves, publications, councils,
awards, and local chapters. Most of these are
within the CNU itself, but some operate independently—notably
the Form-Based Codes Institute
and the National Charette Institute. The swarmlike
process supports initiatives and innovations
that respond to practical needs.
The Region: Metropolis, City, and Town
The new urbanism promotes the elements
of healthy metropolitan form. This includes
(1) polycentric metropolises organized so as to
produce a coherent whole of nature, farmland, and
a hierarchy of communities: villages, towns, and cities
organized along transportation routes; (2) investment
in cities and their infrastructure; (3) limits to
encroachment onto natural and agricultural open
space; (4) jobs and correspondingly priced housing
linked by a transportation network that incorporates
transit; (5) regional cooperation to coordinate
growth; and (6) communities composed of
identifiable neighborhoods and districts.
The Neighborhood, the District, and the Corridor
The new urbanism organizes public infrastructure
and private development into neighborhoods,
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districts, and corridors, which in turn combine into
towns and cities. Characteristics include (1) compact,
pedestrian-friendly, and mixed-use fabric;
(2) a pedestrian shed, reflecting the distance people
will willingly walk (5–10 minutes), organized so
that daily destinations and transit are easy to reach
on foot; (3) a continuous street grid laid out so
that local traffic can avoid arterials, in a pattern
that responds to local topography, climate, and
history; (4) a mix of building types and uses that
includes dwellings and business quarters, with sufficient
density to justify conveniences within walking
distance; (5) respect for historic buildings,
neighborhoods, and landscapes; (6) environmental
practices, open spaces, parks, and infrastructure
that are adjusted to the intensity of the urbanism
and that promote natural methods of climate control
and water conservation; (7) recognizable types
of civic open spaces molded by urban buildings;
and (8) urban design regulated through graphic
design and/or zoning codes.
The Block, the Street, and the Building
New urbanism considers the block, street, and
building to be the fundamental components of
urbanism. Guiding principles include (1) blocks
that average a quarter mile or less in perimeter to
provide frequent intersections and slow traffic and
give pedestrians more choices; (2) streets designed
and sized for the comfort of cyclists and pedestrians,
with wider sidewalks, and narrow lanes to
keep vehicles at safe speeds; (3) buildings with
facades that align to bound public spaces physically—
rather than stand as objects in the landscape;
(4) building types whose proportions enable them to
be organized into a harmonious ensemble—regardless
of style; (5) parking on streets and behind buildings;
(6) a system of familiar and appropriate public and
private boundaries, such as fences, hedges, gates,
porches, and doors; (7) civic buildings designed to
be more prominent than ordinary buildings, by siting
if not by size; and (8) historic buildings preserved
whenever feasible and emulated when they
form an urban fabric.
Organizations
The CNU is the leading new urbanist organization,
founded in 1992 by Peter Calthorpe, Andres