New urbanism: A new approach to the way America builds

Abstract

New Urbanism has been characterized as the most important phenomenon to emerge in American architecture and planning since the Modernist movement. Like any movement promoting ideas that challenge long standing practices, New Urbanism has received its share of criticism. This article focuses on the positive aspects of these movements. It provides an overview of the movement and looks into the lessons that could be learned from the application of its ideas to the design and development of cities. Illustrative of many New Urbanism ideas are the efforts undertaken in Europe during the last decade of the twentieth century. The charter outlines a new vision of the spatial and physical form of the contemporary built environment promoted by New Urbanism and defines the principles and development policies that support that vision. Then, the Charter refers to regions as "fundamental economic unitas of the contemporary world" and calls for coordination of public policies, physical planning, and economic strategies to deal with this new reality. New Urbanism brings to fore the importance of an integrated approach to rectifying the problems of urban growth and to bring about change to the unsustainable pattern of the current urban landscape. It, also, asserts that the process for effecting changes in the urban structure and public policies should be based on developing close partnerships and cooperation among various disciplines, interest groups, and citizens. There is, also, an idea on Reaffirmation of the Traditional Urbanism principles that have guided design of cities for centuries. New Urbanism, of course, does not offer solutions to all ills of the American built environment, however, it has inspired significant changes in the approaches to planning and development.

Keywords

• planning
• movements
• application
• design
• integrated approach
• problems
• growth
• built environment
• coordination