Original Projects - Old Urbanism

Over the past 20 years, the New Urbanist bandwagon has picked up just about everyone who has taken the time to study it. The Charter of The New Urbanism, ratified by the Congress of New Urbanism in 1996, is a broad-sweeping manifesto emphasizing a return to community oriented development, walkability of neighborhoods, and parks. On paper, The Charter is chock-full of so many wholly agreeable ideas, it is not surprising critiques are few and far between.

In practice there is much to critique about New Urbanism. The aims of density, mixed-use, community involvement, limiting sprawl are all amicable. But 20 years of New Urbanist development has yielded more of the development it aims to combat, namely homogenous, wealthy, car-dominated sprawl. Most disappointing, for all the promotion of infill and existing urban corridors re-birth, an unacceptable proportion of developments fly the New Urbanist flag in virgin greenfields.

The Congress encouraged architects and designers to take the best principles from our urban successes of the early 20th century and apply them to new development. Build dense communities close to commercial districts, they said, with mixed uses and incomes, mass transit, and unique architecture. New Urbanism failed to recognize that the golden egg they hoped to lay already existed in mass; unique, often abandoned urban cores.

Why has the movement shunned work restoring old buildings, neighborhoods and cities? One theory is the members of The Congress, primarily made up of architects and planners, make livings planning new neighborhoods and buildings, not existing ones. New is simpler and more profitable. Plus, highly creative people prefer to work on their own creations, not others.

Perhaps the movement would benefit from inclusion of more preservationists and historic building owners. Or, given New Urbanism’s desertion of the city, perhaps an entirely separate movement is warranted. Introducing Old Urbanism.

No images have been set up yet.

by Aaron Lubeck on 02-17-2010 @ 2:56 PM EST

QUESTION: NEW URBANISM: GOOD OR BAD?

Glad to see a few people joining the project. I'll pose a question in hopes of feedback: In your experience is New Urbanism good or bad?

Please Signin or Signup to Comment.

Mark Keller: I think New Urbanist colonies are just another example in the long anthology of the near-impossibility of creating entire communities over short periods (refer to the imperial city of Chang'an, Brasilia, and now Dubai). To transfer ideals to reality with such a heavy hand has unexpected repercussions; those planned developments that allow for mutation and change succeed. My perception of Old Urbanism is one of multiplying small changes, one of inherent flexibility, and thus one more closely mirroring human needs.

02-19-2010 @ 11:26 AM EST
Aaron Lubeck: Agreed. New Urbanist projects are invariably planned communities, which by defintion takes design decisions out of the end user's hands and into that of planners and architects. To my knoweldge no one has tried to develop a New Urbanist community like they did in the early 20th century - by subdividing land and letting people build the home they want, customized to their needs and desires. Good thougths.

02-19-2010 @ 4:01 PM EST
blah: so...wealthy people should retake the urban cores that they willingly abandoned during the 'white flight' of people, capital, and tax revenue to the suburbs during the previous 30 years. sounds like old urbanism is an argument for new gentrification. please stay in the suburbs.

04-17-2010 @ 7:35 PM EDT
Aaron Lubeck: One can pose the argument that such flight was encouraged by ill guided government policy ranging from the federal interstates to the mortgage interest deduction. Regional tax base policy is certainly flawed and has killed equality in places like St. Louis and Detroit, articulated best in books like Jon Kozol's Savage Inequality. Still, Preservation NC's Myrick Howard recently presented research that showed our OLD communities (read, historic) are by far the most mixed (race and income) communities in the country. Historic communities are far more likely to embrace diversity where suburbs, almost categorically, have fought it tooth and nail.

04-26-2010 @ 9:39 PM EDT