New Urbanism at 15

"Fifteen years after its official founding, New Urbanism remains a planning and design movement that’s distributed very unevenly across the country.

To gauge where New Urbanism is flourishing and where it is still in an earlier, slower stage of growth, New Urban News analyzed two sources: listings in the 2008 Directory of the New Urbanism and membership in the Congress for the New Urbanism. CNU provided a geographic breakdown of its members, who tend to be the movement’s activists. In the second annual edition of the Directory, published by New Urban News Publications, we looked at the locations of projects and offices of practitioners, developers, and builders. There is substantial overlap in the clusters from the Directory and CNU, but differences as well (some tables shown below; please see June 2008 issue for all tables).

Perhaps not surprisingly, we found that on a per capita basis, the District of Columbia has by far more people involved in the New Urbanism than any of the states. As an urban place with more than its share of policy wonks, the nation’s capital is proving to be fertile ground for new urbanists."