New urban community promotes social networks and walking

New Urban News Article with image and tables, 9/1/2009

A study of Orenco Station, a large traditional neighborhood development in Hillsboro, Oregon, backs claims that new urban design fosters physical activity and adds to the richness of community life.

For years social scientists have been skeptical of new urbanists’ claims that traditional neighborhood design can enrich community life and lure people out of their cars. Since modernist planning failed so dramatically to solve social problems in the middle of the 20th Century, conventional academic wisdom has mostly dismissed the notion that physical design can foster community.

Over the years, however, media stories and occasional surveys have indicated that new urbanists could be right in their assertions — but these reports have been dismissed as anecdotal or lacking in scientific rigor. So a study by a team of researchers from Lewis and Clark College led by sociology professor Bruce Podobnik has the potential to influence how those in the academy, and public policy, think about urban design and its effect on community.

The study was based on a door-to-door survey of four neighborhoods in the Portland, Oregon, area. One was a conventional suburb in Beaverton, Oregon. Two were neighborhoods in Portland with differing physical characteristics and histories. The last was Orenco Station, one of the best-known new urban developments in the Northwest, with approximately 1,850 housing units and a town center that includes 68,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial space on a total of 190 acres.