Whether you know it by name or not, most of America has at one time or another come into contact with New Urbanism. This anti-modernist anti-sprawl post-modern offshoot which has been with us for almost 30 years, since the development of Seaside, Florida in 1980 held a conference in Old Town Alexandria, VA. If you understood the nature of New Urbanism, the fact that their conference was being held in one of the oldest downtowns in virginia is quite the irony.
New Urbanism stands for the creation of artificial suburban (and sometimes urban) downtowns and mixed use communities, something, which like the path to hell, is paved with good intentions. The problem I have always had with the New Urbanist movement is its non-organic nature. Communities get branded before they are built; house styles and strict zoning rules are pre-planned and approved by designers preventing any straying from the ideal image from entering the perfect new (sub)urban town. They also stand in direct opposition to Modernism; instead of drawing on both the strengths and weaknesses of modernism, they look to its failures and piece together historical pastiche architecture in an attempt to meet the needs of the present. Which is ironic, considering that modernism’s creed was to disregard all architecture that came before it to re-discover the natural forms of building.
On the other hand, I have great respect for what the movement did. It changed the discourse of suburbia and the planned town. No longer was planning a black and white contrast between Levittowns and Unité d’Habitations, but instead planned communities could approach multiple scales and occur both in and outside of cities. In addition it brought a focus back to mixing uses, developing ground floor commercial corridors with residents above and providing mass transit systems.
In recent years, New Urbanism has seen a wax and wane with the tides of fashion. More and more developers are using the New Urbanist Town Center model, but not applying the actual design philosophy to it. While at the same time the newest move by New Urbanists is to co-opt the language of Green Building, because by nature the New Urbanist system is very green friendly (if you disregard that most New Urbanist construction is on Greenfield/virgin sites). In my opinion this is a smart move; New Urbanism is appealing to local planning commissions and if it also helps bring about environmentally friendly design and planning that would be a boon for American Suburbia.