New Urbanism in the new millennium
Chapter 3 of the New Urbanism Best Practices Guide
New Urbanism has been applied to an ever more diverse array of settings in the three decades since Seaside was planned on the Florida Panhandle and Battery Park City was replanned in New York. Seaside showed how to revive many of the best elements of small-town design. Battery Park City, with its requirements for consistent street-walls and open space showed how large, dense urban precincts could respect human scale and enhance the public realm.
Since then, New Urbanism has been applied to suburban greenfield development, infill development, redevelopment of contaminated (“brownfield”) sites, failed commercial properties (“grayfield” sites), town centers, downtowns, transit-oriented development (TOD), military housing, public housing, and extensions of existing towns. This chapter looks at 30 projects encompassing all those categories. They are:
Greenfield: New Town at St. Charles in Missouri; Celebration, Florida; Harbor Town, Memphis, Tennessee; and Prospect, Longmont, Colorado.
Grayfield: Belmar, Lakewood, Colorado; Mizner Park, Boca Raton, Florida; Santana Row, San Jose, California; and Stapleton, Denver.
Brownfield: Glenwood Park, Atlanta; Beerline B, Milwaukee; Summerset at Frick Park, Pittsburgh; and Waterfront District, Hercules, California.
Town centers: Birkdale Village, Huntersville, North Carolina; Mashpee Commons, Mashpee, Massachusetts; and Excelsior & Grand, St. Louis Park, Minnesota.
Downtown/infill: CityPlace, downtown West Palm Beach, Florida; downtown Albuquerque; and the Cotton District, Starkville, Mississippi.
TOD: Rockville Town Center, Rockville, Maryland; Orenco Station, East Hillsboro, Oregon; Market Clarendon, Arlington, Virginia; and Del Mar Station, Pasadena, California.
Military: Fort Belvoir, Fairfax County, Virginia; Naval Training Center, San Diego; and McGrew Point Naval Housing, Oahu, Hawaii.
HOPE VI: City West, Cincinnati; New Columbia, Portland, Oregon; and Park DuValle, Louisville, Kentucky.
Town extensions: Hammond’s Ferry, North Augusta, Georgia, and South Main, Buena Vista, Colorado.
The 30 projects are supplemented by names, locations, and website addresses of dozens of other projects. This chapter also presents a 10-step protocol for designing a greenfield site, from the SmartCode.
