Words Of Advice For The New Urbanism Movement

"Since the movement’s pioneering couple, Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, designed the Florida panhandle community of Seaside back in 1980, the number of successful New Urbanist communities has steadily increased across the country. These include “greenfield” projects on undeveloped exurban land and inner-city, government-subsidized neighborhood developments that have replaced dysfunctional Urban Renewal–era housing projects. Still, while the New Urbanism set the stage for the current displacement of shopping malls by pedestrian-friendly, streetscape-oriented “lifestyle centers,” the New Urbanist share of U.S. property development remains minute. From tiny “infill” developments in sparsely-settled suburbs or deteriorated city blocks to large-scale urban plans, the project total probably comes to less than 1,000.

And so the vibes at the conference, which took place at the Lyceum in Alexandria and in the Caucus Room of the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill, resembled those of a countercultural cabal. After more than a quarter-century of New Urbanism, proclaimed Stefanos Polyzoides—who, with his wife Elizabeth Moule, heads a top-flight urban-design practice in Pasadena, California—“there’s no indication that the system of building in this country is even dented.” In other words, sprawl still reigns, and so do the sundry forms of architectural dysfunction afflicting the nation’s public realm. The New Urbanists have changed the conversation, but they haven’t changed the world. At least, not yet."