Revitalizing cities and towns

Chapter 4 of the New Urbanism Best Practices Guide

America contains many underperforming human habitats — places where it is hard to work or live, hard to carry on a satisfying personal and communal life. Some of these are in cities, but others are in suburbs or other locales. This chapter looks at how to tackle familiar problems such as failing downtown malls and dangerous public housing projects; it also delves into how to make communities of all kinds more livable, satisfying, and successful.

The HOPE VI public housing redevelopment program has achieved its successes through 11 techniques, including subdivision into smaller blocks; replacement of high-rises with townhouses, detached houses, and small apartment buildings; making low-income units look like market-rate housing; placing houses close to the street, with plenty of windows and front porches or stoops for informal surveillance; and providing a separate entrance and a private yard for each unit. Often the architecture resembles the neighborhood in which it sits. Addition of new components, such as recreation facilities, health facilities, stores, and small businesses can strengthen a development.

Milwaukee used a series of initiatives, including opening the Milwaukee River to pedestrians and laying out the 20-acre Beerline B redevelopment in small, walkable blocks with mixed uses and high connectivity. The 113-acre East Village in Calgary, Alberta, has a plan that adheres to three principles: build to the sidewalk, make the streetfront visually and physically and physically permeable, and put the parking behind, under, or above the building. Pasadena, California, has sprinkled courtyards and passages through an old part of downtown. A number of suburbs have developed new, mixed-use centers, in some cases having the local government assemble the land. This chapter concludes with eight keys to making waterfront redevelopment successful.