New Urbanisms: From Neo-Traditional Neighbourhoods to New Regionalism - Theme Cities: Solutions for Urban Problems - page 22

Table 2﻽1 (continued)

(24) Architecture and landscape design should grow from local climate, topography, history,
and building practice
(25) Civic buildings and public gathering places require important sites to reinforce commu-
nity identity and the culture of democracy. They deserve distinctive form, because their role is
different from that of other buildings and places that constitute the fabric of the city
(26) All buildings should provide their inhabitants with a clear sense of location, weather and
time. Natural methods of heating and cooling can be more resource-efficient than mechanical
systems
(27) Preservation and renewal of historic buildings, districts, and landscapes affirm the conti-
nuity and evolution of urban society

often seen as its emphasis. At a macro scale, nine of these principles concern the
region, including the relationships between the metropolis, the city, and the town.
Nine others specify meso-scale principles associated with the neighbourhood, the
district, and the corridor—the essential building blocks of new urbanism. The last
nine provide additional micro-scale specificity for individual building and other
architectural and landscape design features. What is clear from the principles is the
need to plan for the metropolitan region not just little parts, in which governance
and economies are based on the region, although there are no guides of how to do
this. Within the various urban units it is stressed that there is a need for a range of
housing, social housing, park space and an emphasis upon walkability, mixed uses
and local employment, as well as anticipating transit corridors to improve transport
flows and the need to preserve historical heritage.

2﻽4 What Does New Urbanism Hope to Achieve?

Many planners have recognized that inappropriate planning tools of the past, in-
cluding poor rules for land management, have generated sprawl, poor design, ex-
clusionary zoning and a demise of authentic community (Grant 2006 ), but they
also recognize that urban growth or expansion is inevitable (Calthorpe 2001 ). So
the key issue for New Urbanists is the question of managing future growth without
sprawl, or at least in such a way that attenuates its negative impacts. The NU ap-
proach to sprawl is to consider it within a broader urbanization and development
context. It attempts to refocus our planning approaches to think about the regional
contexts of sprawl, and to consider what has been called the 'urbanization of the
whole, not the urbanization of the pieces' (Calthorpe 1994 ). It is here that TOD and
SG approaches, which focus more on urban or macro scale planning than the other
approaches, combine to address issues of sprawl. These approaches stress the need
for more integrative public transit systems that link neighbourhoods with cities, and
cities within regions, thereby reducing reliance on private automobiles. Their plans
call for more transit-oriented satellite towns, pedestrian pockets, and an increase