Often forgotten amid the Truman Show jokes and architectural disdain are the iconic New Urbanist community's contributions to planning history, and its many innovations. Two new works are helping to reframe how the Florida town is understood.
"It’s easy to mock Seaside, and plenty do, for being overplanned, a neo-traditional artifice too consumed with nostalgia for an idyllic past that never quite existed as reconceived," writes Kaid Benfield.
"But the story is so much more good than bad. One has to remember, as the video below reminds us, that the compact, 80-acre town was conceived over 30 years ago, when almost no one was building walkable communities. If it wasn’t sprawl, it didn’t sell, or so people thought. Seaside may have been built on decades-old premises, but it was downright radical for its day."
A new book by Dhiru Thadani, Visions of Seaside, "tells the complete story of Seaside's conception and evolution." And the short documentary below, produced by Chris Elisara for the American Makeover series, explores several of the innovate ideas that form the foundation of the plan, and situates the pioneering development within the context of planning history.
FULL STORY: Reconsidering Seaside, Florida
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Book Review: Visions of Seaside
A new anthology tells the story of Seaside like we've never heard it before–on its own terms.
The Unbuilt Origins of Seaside
Seaside, Florida is well known as the proving grounds for new urbanism, the place where Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk made a development into a town. Dhiru Thadani documents the early experiments and unbuilt designs in a new book.
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Congress Moves to End Reconnecting Communities and Related Grants
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee moved to rescind funding for the Neighborhood Equity and Access program, which funds highway removals, freeway caps, transit projects, pedestrian infrastructure, and more.
From Throughway to Public Space: Taking Back the American Street
How the Covid-19 pandemic taught us new ways to reclaim city streets from cars.
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