New Urbanism is about better living

In its early days, New Urbanism as a concept was sold based on how it could help humans to have a better life. The suburbs, it was said, take away the independence of children and make walking to school difficult. They place barriers between neighbors, and force people into cars for nearly every trip. Rigid separation of housing types divides communities by housing needs and income. The lack of centers and public spaces strips away community character.

New urbanists said they could solve, or at least alleviate, these problems through better design. Advocates of this new-old way of building took a lot of heat for it, especially from architects and academics. Some architects accused new urbanists of building stage sets posing as real communities.
Social scientists, for the most part, ignored the New Urbanism. With few sociological studies examining whether new urban communities socially outperform typical suburbs, it was said that new urbanist assertions were not backed up by scientific evidence. How effectively scientists could measure some of the assertions was an open question. New urbanists said, for example, that pleasant streets to walk on enrich people’s lives; that sounds like common sense, but it’s difficult to prove.

Shifting criticism
In recent years, criticism of suburbia in public policy debates has shifted to environmental issues. It turns out that the suburbs are a major contributor to global warming and dependence on petroleum. Evidence has piled up that better urban design cuts down on carbon emissions.

But new urbanists continued to make social critiques. For one thing, these arguments proved useful in getting approvals where the regulatory deck was stacked against New Urbanism. And marketers, who are in the thick of the cut-throat competition for real estate sales, use the vision of a better community life to get buyers to choose something different from the standard suburban option.
This effort has been fairly effective. Until the economic collapse stopped the real estate industry dead in its tracks, new urban communities sold well for more than 10 years. That success has largely won over developers.

But were the social claims of the New Urbanism merely a marketing ploy? I’ve never lived in a new urban community — I live in a neighborhood built prior to World War II — but I’ve spent a fair amount of time in such places. What I have seen in Celebration in Florida, Kentlands in Maryland, New Town at St. Charles, Missouri, and elsewhere on a Friday or Saturday night with good weather is close, I imagine, to the old community liveliness that Americans enjoyed before television. In New Town in particular I remember an outdoor movie, kids doing cartwheels on the green, beach volleyball — the whole town seemed to converge on the center, and the compact layout of the place contributed to the overall energy.

Now there is scientific data to back up my observations. A study of Orenco Station in Hillsboro, Oregon, adds weight to a previous study of Kentlands. (See story on page 01.) The Orenco Station study indicates that people’s lives are changing in important and healthy ways as a result of new urban design.

Orenco Station residents gather together nearly twice as often, and the meetings are more geared to fun activities — compared to a suburban subdivision in Beaverton where they meet mostly to deal with property issues. Orenco Station residents walk to stores 10 times as often as the Beaverton residents — a strong validation of the new urban belief in building walkable centers.

This study gets back to the roots of the New Urbanism: the needs of people. It’s important to solve global warming and reduce oil dependence, but also important to design places that help break down the social barriers of modern life. We need to enjoy each other’s company more — and it’s time we stopped making it harder through poor planning.