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1999 ). So most agree that the NU approach has been successful in designing more
attractive and well-functioning spaces. Even its critics reluctantly note that the often
'cute' architecture in these places is better than the standard, front garage-dominat-
ed architecture of the late twentieth century suburbs (Ford 1999 ).
2.6.2
Identity and Community
Identity and community are foundational principles of NU that are very much linked
to the desire to overcome the sterility and placeless character of the suburbs. Iden-
tity is reinforced in NU through design codes, and through reference to a historical
heritage, even if it is artificially constructed or imagined. The design features which
may be unique to the area may not create an immediate community identity or
'sense of placeʼ, but as Grant ( 2006 ) suggests, these developments seem to provide
the residents with a head start in creating such feelings in their new surroundings.
This identity, and the aesthetic character of the area, is stabilized through restrictive
covenants that owners have to agree to when purchasing property. These restrictions
offer a kind of guaranteed identity conformity for the future, which may help the
development of a sense of cohesiveness among residents (Frantz and Collins 1999 ).
A moot question is whether the NU designs alone have been successful at develop-
ing identity. Some evidence suggests that they do (Grant 2006 ), but others have
maintained that the identity creation of NU seems to be associated with their niche
market character (Gyourko and Rybczynski 2000 ) and with the fact they are aimed
at a limited consumer segment, upper middle class people, often baby boomers.
These people seek out such communities because they may offer an identity based
on a particular constellation of lifestyle choices—what Ford ( 1999 ) called 'lifestyle
zones' in the city. This socio-economic restriction of the NU developments means
that there are few signs in these communities of the complete range of social types
envisaged by many NU advocates.
The creation of a sense of community—what Putnam ( 2001 ) viewed as 'bowling
together'—lies behind much of the design rationale of NU developments (McCann
1995 ; Hall 1998 ; Kim and Kaplan 2004 ). Most commentators suggest that NU may
have succeeded (Brown and Cropper 2001 ) in creating such identities, and at least a
stimulus for a sense of place. Yet so far there have been few rigorous empirical stud-
ies of the extent to which these NU designs generate real identities of community
cohesion. Moreover, there is a design determinism behind the assumption of such
feelings and behaviours, which by no means guarantees the successful creation of
a sense of community. This is the same problem found in the British new towns of
the 1950s and has been repeated in more recent work (Brindley 2003 ). Indeed it has
been suggested that while there may be claims for a better sense of community in
NU designs:
the connection between new urbanist form and the affective dimensions of sense of
community becomes more and more untenable as the complexity of meaning involved is
evaluated. (Talen 1999 , p. 1370)
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