Many "New Urbanist" communities are little more than marketing. River Ranch, outside of Baton Rouge is the real thing -- and a huge commercial success.
"The term New Urbanism is tossed about regularly by builders and developers as a marketing trick, a means by some to show they are ahead of the curve, a chance to charge higher rates for apartments or commercial buildings. But visit some of these trumpeted undertakings and you are likely to be disappointed. What you will find is another sprawling strip center or project where apartments are here, offices are there and the retail is somewhere else, requiring you to struggle between the three in an automobile when you could have left the wheels behind and walked if the developer had just done what he promised.... River Ranch is so successful that once-skeptical doctors and lawyers are moving from newer, well-heeled neighborhoods across town to live there. That's like the nouveau riche of Baton Rouge unlocking the gates of swank Country Club of Louisiana and trading it for a community that is connected to everything around it, to the city outside."
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