Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
in the walkability of areas surrounding these nodes as well as more attention to
sustainability.
NU also hopes to reverse the twentieth century trend of poor suburban design
and land use planning, to develop a new architecture of community (Scully
1994
),
and to bring about a complete paradigm shift in community building (Katz
1994
;
Al-Hindi
2001
). The goals here are really about rethinking the internal design of
neighbourhoods, the homes within them, and the land use mixes within them. Ma-
jor proponents of TND, such as Duaney and Plater-Zyberk who are often lauded as
the 'evangelists' of NU (Knox
1992
), envision communities that have several key
features, namely: they are more compact; have higher population densities; have
narrower streets; are more pedestrianized; are designed at a more human scale; have
greater social and socioeconomic diversity; have more zoning flexibility to produce
a greater mix of residential, commercial, and public spaces; and provide a design
foundation for a more 'authentic' urban life. A key feature of this rediscovery of
a more 'authentic' urban life is the need to re-assert public space as a critical ele-
ment in communities. New Urbanists believe that exemplar communities of the past
provide the reference point for these types of places (Hall
2000
). So this approach,
which is heavily design oriented, seeks to include elements of vernacular and clas-
sical architecture from 'exemplar' older towns. This strand of NU, usually referred
to as Neo-Traditional Neighbourhood Design, is about reviving those elements of
historic towns that worked well, ones that provided people with a sense of identity,
a human scale, and public engagement, although these ideas have been labelled as
'old fangled New Towns' (Anderson
1991
), or a 'Brave Old World' (Knox
1992
,
p. 221). Yet Bressi (
1994
) cautioned that NU should not be seen as some kind of
Romantic Movement; rather, it is a deceptively simple response to the problems of
contemporary suburban development based on one principle, namely that commu-
nity planning and design must assert the importance of public over private space.
As opposed to the contemporary suburb, in which NU argue that 'community'
has met its demise, the overarching aim of NU developments is to rediscover what
is called 'authentic' community, although many dispute the term 'authentic' as be-
ing too vague. Indeed there have been few attempts by New Urbanists to explore the
community dimensions, which have been shown to be complex (Davies and Herbert
1993
; Townshend and Davies
1999
). However, the key idea for NU is that the right
architecture, the right planning, the right mix of land uses, and the right integration
of public space will bring about the right kinds of social interaction, neighbourli-
ness, sense of belonging, and identity through which people will rediscover com-
munity, within appropriate socially heterogeneous neighbourhoods. In short, the
desire is to create a 'geography of somewhere' (Axhausen
2000
). While there are
elements of social utopianism in these aims, just as the NU have drawn on architec-
ture and design principles from old towns, in North America as well as Europe, they
have also looked to older urban social commentators for inspiration. For example,
Jane Jacobs (
1961
) in the
Death and Life of Great American Cities
, heavily criti-
cized suburban planning practice and was instrumental in beginning the critiques
that led to the NU ideas that revived the idea of community, the need for social
variety and spontaneity, as well as the use of public spaces for social interaction.
