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NEW URBANISM 101: INTRODUCTION TO THE PRINCIPLES OF NEW URBANISM

• Summit Presentation
• new urban basics
• urban history

This in-depth primer on the history, principles, and concepts of New Urbanism will provide Congress attendees the opportunity to hear Andrés Duany and other founding members of the movement discuss why New Urbanism works. The daylong course provides an illustrated introduction and a foundation in key concepts such as conventional vs. traditional development, the Charter, why transportation planning matters, and theory vs. practice. Attend this session and you will walk away with an excellent understanding of what makes a great place and why!

Presenters:

• Andrés Duany, Principal, Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company
• Jeff B. Speck, AICP LEED-AP, SPECK & ASSOCIATES LLC
• Emily Talen, PhD AICP, Professor, School of Geographical Sciences, School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, Arizona State University
• Peter Swift, Owner, Swift and Associates

Slideshow by Emily Talen:

New Urbanism in the New Urban Agenda: Threads of an unfinished (global) reformation

In 1922—a century ago this year—a young Swiss architect named Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, made a radical proposal for the restructuring of Paris and other cities. His utopian plan for a “Ville Contemporaine” (contemporary city) featured wide streets dedicated to automobiles, high rise and midrise buildings set back far from the streets on superblocks, large swoopy pedestrian-only open spaces, and rigid zoning of buildings and streets by function and use. His was not the first such proposal, but it was certainly the most dramatic.

Indeed, Le Corbusier’s plan caused a sensation when it was exhibited at the annual Société du Salon d'automne exhibition in Paris that year. Soon after, he would propose to demolish a large section of central Paris, working with the car company Voisin, to be replaced with the urban model he later called the “Radiant City.” 

Thankfully, that plan was never carried out. But in 1933, Le Corbusier and his colleagues convened to write a manifesto proclaiming their principles. Along with similar documents of the time, the Athens Charter became a blueprint for future urban development—and an enormously influential one.

A few years later, Le Corbusier’s model was used by Norman Bel Geddes for the General Motors Futurama exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair—and audiences were enthralled. After the war ended, the country set about building a remarkably faithful version of Le Corbusier’s vision.

It has now been a century since Le Corbusier’s 1922 exhibition, and in that time, the world has seen astonishing changes. On average, humanity is far richer, healthier, more able to travel, and more able to enjoy technological comforts and conveniences undreamt of by our ancestors.

And yet, in spite of Le Corbusier’s utopian vision—or perhaps because of it—too many of our cities, suburbs, and towns are not well. They’re too often choked by traffic, dangerous for pedestrians and bicyclists, and over-dependent on cars for transportation. Among other impacts, that poses a grave hardship for the elderly, the young, the poor, the infirm, and parents who are forced to become their children’s taxi drivers.

Moreover, the rigidly planned Radiant City model hasn’t resulted in the hoped-for affordability and equity of access. Instead, disadvantaged populations have been isolated in functionally segregated superblock “projects,” cut off from the surrounding urban fabric and its opportunities. (Jane Jacobs and other perceptive scholars have given incisive critiques of the problems this has created.) Meanwhile, market-rate housing has soared in cost, even as it has continued to sprawl across the car-dominated landscape. Investors are able to use housing, and the land under it, as speculative commodities, while the top-down technocratic and political process of building becomes ever more complicated and constrained. 

There’s also a growing sense that our buildings and our cities are just plain ugly—especially compared to the many beautiful buildings that existed before Le Corbusier’s day. Maybe this doesn’t matter, we think. But a  growing body of research evidence  shows that when users find their environments ugly, that produces stress, and degrades mental well-being and even acuity. By contrast, beautiful streets and buildings (also as judged by their users) encourage walking, biking, socializing, and enjoying a more active public realm. It also lowers stress and improves mental well-being, studies show. It seems that human beings have an innate need to be outdoors, and to be around vegetation, water, and other beautiful natural forms. But these urban attributes are increasingly hard to come by, at least for all but the wealthiest.

To be sure, Le Corbusier and his colleagues did seek to create beauty—but it was an esoteric beauty tied to function, and a beauty of monumental scales viewed at a distance. It was best appreciated by other architects, or from passing cars, and not by ordinary people living their daily lives at the human scale. In fact, Le Corbusier had no interest in the scale of ordinary pedestrian delights, or lively streetscapes, or sidewalk cafes—which he once dismissed contemptuously to as “the fungus that eats the sidewalks of Paris.” 

In all these aspects, the livability of our cities and towns—their capacity to promote safety, health and well-being—is under increasing threat. It is not too much to say that these growing problems are threatening the sustainability of our cities, and along with other problems, the sustainability of our civilization.  

This is not a new idea to members of the Congress for the New Urbanism, whose charter takes up many of these issues. The  CNU Charter  proclaims that “neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice.”

But Le Corbusier and his collaborators had a very different model of cities—and it’s the one we have largely inherited. For them, neighborhoods should be functionally segregated by use; streets should also be segregated and classified by function, with major spaces given over to the car; and urban spaces should be only loosely framed by architecture that is set far back from the streets, amid loose greenery. Local history, climate, ecology, and building practice are not to be celebrated but replaced, with new mechanically produced, technically masterful environments. 

In recent years, many planners, architects and urban advocates have come to believe that reform is urgently needed, especially away from the model of Le Corbusier and the Athens Charter. The New Urbanists have played an outsize role in that now global reform movement, with their Charter of the New Urbanism—a clever inversion of the Athens Charter—although they are certainly not alone. 

In 2016, many of these reform-minded advocates (including some New Urbanists) gathered from around the world to participate in the remarkable Habitat III conference in Quito, Ecuador, hosted by UN-Habitat. The outcome document of that conference, known as the  New Urban Agenda , represented what the Secretary-General referred to as a “paradigm shift” in the thinking about what makes good cities.

That outcome document closely paralleled the Charter of the New Urbanism—and both represented a reversal of the doctrines of the Athens Charter. As my colleagues and I have documented, there are numerous points of similarity and overlap between the Charter of the New Urbanism and the New Urban Agenda. Both speak of mix of uses, walkability, and public space networks. Both advocate compactness, polycentrism, and buildings defining the public realm. Both hold that heritage, climate and local cultural traditions must be respected. And there are many other points of convergence. 

Indeed, there are at least six major points on which the Charter of the New Urbanism agrees with the New Urban Agenda. On the same six points, both flatly contradict the Athens Charter. These six points are zoning of elements, design of streets, orientation of buildings, treatment of historic structures and patterns, role of specialists in relation to citizens, and accommodation of change over time. The following table summarizes the position of each of the three documents on these six points.

The good news is that the New Urban Agenda was later adopted by acclamation by all 193 member countries of the United Nations, including the United States. Whatever one’s opinion of the flaws of that institution (and like any human institution, it surely has them), this is undoubtedly a milestone in urban history—a global agreement on the need for urban reforms.  These are reforms that, as we have seen, closely parallel those called for in the Charter of the New Urbanism.

It is also surely a good thing that people from around the world are coming together to find ways of reforming our cities and towns, and sharing the tools and methods for doing so. Many of them can be adapted to work well in other contexts, or to be developed further so that they work better.

It is to gather and share tools and methods for creating better cities and towns that the International Making Cities Livable was created in 1985. Henry Lennard, a Viennese medical sociologist, and Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard, an English architectural scholar, were passionate about exchanging the best lessons and most effective ideas for creating more livable, beautiful, ecological, humane settlements. To do that, they brought together mayors, senior planners, designers, NGO heads, builders, developers, and top academic researchers, in a peer-to-peer gathering to share the best knowledge to drive positive change.

The  IMCL  is complementary to the CNU in several key respects. One is that the IMCL focuses more on academic research translated into practice and senior government policy, while the CNU is more focused (though certainly not exclusively) on developing the expertise of practitioners. That is a very complementary relationship, since both are sorely needed. A second complementary aspect is that the IMCL by definition has an international focus, while the CNU is generally more US-focused. But the IMCL, like other CNU allies, can help to extend the CNU network to a global scale.

Our next IMCL conference , on May 18-20, will occur in the Paris suburb of Le Plessis-Robinson—a fascinating case study of a suburban retrofit from a “banlieue” in the Le Corbusier model, to a more mixed, walkable, diverse, ecological neighborhood. The IMCL, like the CNU ( CNU 30 takes place March 23-26 in Oklahoma City), places great importance on gathering in case study settings, and examining lessons in a peer-to-peer exchange.

The 58 th  IMCL conference will focus on “architecture and the edges of public space,” and how the implementation of the New Urban Agenda can bring new attention to this crucial but neglected aspect of city-making. Our speakers include Laura Petrella, a senior official of UN-Habitat; Carlos Moreno, the developer of Paris’ “15-minute city” model; George Ferguson, Past President of the Royal Institute of British Architects and first elected Mayor of Bristol, UK; Rui Moreira, Mayor of Porto, Portugal; Ben Bolgar, Senior Design Director of The Prince’s Foundation in London; and familiar US participants including Christopher Leinberger of George Washington University, James Brainard, Mayor of Carmel, Indiana, and Setha Low of the Graduate School at City University of New York and the Public Space Research Group, among other leaders.  

Partners, in addition to the CNU, include the Council for European Urbanism, the European Placemaking Network, PlacemakingX, several chapters of the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism INTBAU), and the Center for Conscious City Design, among others. (More information is at https://www.imcl.online/2022-paris .)

We will discuss all these issues in a topical podcast of “On the Park Bench” on March 1 st  at 12 pm Eastern Standard Time. Panelists will include Luisa Bravo, editor of the  Journal of Public Space , Peter Elmlund, of the Ax:son Johnson Foundation and the IMCL Board, and myself as IMCL director, with moderation from Dhiru Thadani of Thadani Architect + Urbanist. You can join  here .

We look forward to joining you there, and we hope, in Oklahoma City, and in Paris! 

View the discussion thread.

New Urbanism Theory and Practice

Aug 22, 2014

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New Urbanism Theory and Practice. New Urbanist principles Established neighborhoods Recent attempts at New Urbanist design. New Urbanist Principles. Neighborhoods compact , pedestrian-friendly, and mixed-use.

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New UrbanismTheory and Practice • New Urbanist principles • Established neighborhoods • Recent attempts at New Urbanist design CE512

New Urbanist Principles • Neighborhoods compact, pedestrian-friendly, and mixed-use. • Many activities of daily living should occur within walking distance. Street networks to encourage walking, reduce the number and length of automobile trips. • A broad range of housing types and price levels. Diverse ages, races, and incomes essential to an authentic community. • Transit corridors can help organize metropolitan structure. Appropriate building densities and land uses should be within walking distance of transit stops. • Concentrations of civic, institutional, and commercial activity embedded in neighborhoods. Schools sized and located to enable children to walk or bicycle to them. • A range of parks, from tot-lots and village greens to ballfields and community gardens, distributed within neighborhoods. Conservation areas and open lands to define and connect different neighborhoods. Source: Congress for the New Urbanism, www.cnu.org CE512

Established Neighborhoods • Delft, since 1200s • Meridian-Kessler (Indianapolis), since 1900 • Oakwood OH, since 1913 • Mariemont OH, since 1924 • St. Lawrence-McAllister (Lafayette), since 1880s CE512

90,000 pop in 7.7 sq mi = 11,700 density Mixed land use Walkable Bicycle-friendly Transit provisions Neighborhood schools Neighborhood parks Open space Delft, The Netherlands CE512

3 mi x 1 mi S edge 4 mi N of Monument Circle Pop density? Meridian-Kessler Neighborhood CE512

54th and College: Commercial node CE512

Meridian-Kessler Neighborhood • Interurban rail stops • Variety of businesses and hours of operation • Business turnover, building reuse • Surrounded by DUs • HH incomes • NMT? CE512

Old development preserved and/or updated Parks and schools Scale 1.5 x ¾ mi Oakwood OH CE512

Businesses along busy streets at neighborhood edges Frontage roads vs. driveways (store access, parking) Oakwood OH CE512

Supermarket street side Parking lot behind store Some mixed use neighborhoods work (Oakwood OH) CE512

St. Lawrence-McAllister CE512

St. Lawrence-McAllister • Small lots • Mostly R1 • DUs per acre? CE512

Businesses along Schuyler Ave. CE512

New Urbanist Design is not always popular • St. Lawrence-McAllister Neighborhood meetings • Thriving neighborhood center means vehicle traffic from outside • “Acceptable”: Businesses on edge on neighborhood CE512

Main street on front edge Multiuse buildings in front Parking behind them Apartments as buffer Residential behind apts. ½ mile from rail transit <Orenco photos??> Orenco OR CE512

Buffer apartments Single Family DUs Orenco (2) CE512

Density, alleys HH income range? Orenco (3) CE512

Questions about New Urbanism • Do recent attempts capture its essence? • Is there a market for it? • What can planners do? • What should planners do? CE512

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Visualizing the "New Urbanism"

The Language of Towns and Cities: A Visual Dictionary

The “New Urbanism” is barely thirty years old. But the goals of the upstart planning and design movement are timeless: the creation of towns and cities shaped to fit human needs and sensibilities, in which ample, walkable public spaces foster a sense of community, in which neighborhoods combine homes and businesses for a diverse population, and in which people can coexist comfortably with automobiles.

To be sure, those exemplary conditions exist in many places around the globe. Some were shaped hundreds of years ago. Some were built from scratch as “new towns.” Some are urban areas that have been retrofitted into more humane environs. But in the United States and elsewhere the opposite is more often and more conspicuously the case: moribund city cores surrounded by concentric accretions of suburbs from which it takes ever more time, hydrocarbons and anxiety to get to work.

“The New Urbanism,” says one of its earliest proponents, Washington architect and international designer Dhiru Thadani, is “the antithesis of the suburban sprawl paradigm and fossil-fuel dependency. It is a movement that promotes the return to compact, walkable, well connected, mixed-use and mixed-income neighborhood development” organized on three spatial scales — “region; city, town and neighborhood; and block, street, and building.”

If that outcome is so self-evidently desirable, why aren’t there more such spaces?

One reason, Thadani believes, is that “there is no common language in the professions of architecture and planning as there is in medicine and law. Words used to describe the built environment are constantly misused. Words such as center, park, village, square, avenue, boulevard and space have lost their true meanings. There is a difference between an avenue, a boulevard, a street, a road and a drive — yet planners, traffic engineers and developers constantly misuse these words.”

That is why he applied for NEH support to produce The Language of Towns and Cities: A Visual Dictionary , an 800-page “encyclodictionary” of terms and concepts published in December 2010.

“The architecture and planning professions have lost their respect and standing in society,” Thadani says. “This is partially due to the loss of a common language that describes particular conditions in the built environment. Professionals cannot even communicate clearly with each other, and the built environment suffers as seen across the United States and globally. I hope this book helps empower the design profession.”

Thadani’s compendium includes material from 52 contributors worldwide. Arranged alphabetically and copiously illustrated with photos and drawings, the entries deal with broad ideas such as dwelling density, accessibility and zoning, technical issues such as intersection typography, examinations of individual model towns and landmarks, and profiles of noted designers.

“This expansive work will quickly become a standard reference resource for architects, historians, educators, and anyone interested to learn about architecture and urban planning,” says Joshua Sternfeld, Senior Program Officer at NEH’s Division of Preservation and Access. “It covers a range of historical and contemporary topics from early examples in ancient Greece and Rome, to international examples in India, to pioneer urban planners such as Thomas Jefferson and Daniel Burnham.”

The book has garnered favorable notices. One reviewer observed that reading the entries is “like taking a very enjoyable short course in urban design.” Another said it is “not only useful for the planning or architecture professional but also the everyday citizen trying to understand the complexities of the city… .” Prominent European architect and urban planner Rob Krier wrote that “It is more than a handbook. It is a guide.”

NEH seemed a natural place for Thadani to seek support for the project because the New Urbanism is as much about culture and society as it is about architecture and traffic. And its effects are measured in human values, social interactions and collective behavior.

“The primary difference between a city and suburb or rural land,” Thadani says, “is that a true city comprises a civic, public realm and a private realm. The civic realm is defined by civic buildings and civic spaces, which includes streets and squares. The civic realm instills and inspires civic pride and uplifts the human spirit. The civic institutions define a society and its values, and should be celebrated with embellished architecture and prominent locations. The civic realm also suggests a particular behavior and decorum. Humanities encourage self-reflection which develops personal consciousness and an active sense of civic duty, necessary for a city/culture to survive. The private realm, in contrast, should have quieter architecture, and less embellishment.”

Thadani — a charter member of the Congress for the New Urbanism — has been awarded the 2011 Seaside Prize, which is “awarded annually to individuals or organizations that have made significant contributions to the quality and character of our communities” by the Seaside Institute in Florida, which espouses New Urbanism principles.

Funding information

Production of The Language of Towns and Cities: A Visual Dictionary was supported by a $30,000 NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grant , awarded in 2010.