New Urbanism - a movement

From Wikipedia.

New urbanism is an American urban design movement that arose in the early 1980s. Its goal is to reform all aspects of real estate development and urban planning, from urban retrofits to suburban infill. New urbanist neighborhoods are designed to contain a diverse range of housing and jobs, and to be walkable.

New Urbanism is also is known as traditional neighborhood design, neotraditional design, and transit-oriented development. A more idealistic variant of New Urbanism, founded in 1999 by Michael E. Arth, is known as New Pedestrianism. The ideas of New Urbanism also are embraced by the European Urban Renaissance movement.

The Local Government Commission, a private nonprofit group in Sacramento, California, invited architects Peter Calthorpe, Michael Corbett, Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Moule, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Stefanos Polyzoides, and Daniel Solomon in 1991 to develop a set of community principles for land use planning. Named the Ahwahnee Principles (after Yosemite National Park's Ahwahnee Hotel), the commission presented the principles to about one hundred government officials in the fall of 1991, at its first Yosemite Conference for Local Elected Officials.

Market Street, downtown Celebration, FloridaCalthorpe, Duany, Moule, Plater-Zyberk, Polyzoides, and Solomon founded the Chicago-based Congress for the New Urbanism in 1993. The CNU has grown to more than 2,000 members, and is the leading international organization promoting new urbanist design principles. It held its fifteenth congress in 2007 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which included applying New Urbanist principles to older cities.

The CNU's Charter of the New Urbanism says:

“ We advocate the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the following principles: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice. ”

New urbanists support regional planning for open space, appropriate architecture and planning, and the balanced development of jobs and housing. They believe their strategies are the best way to reduce traffic congestion, increase the supply of affordable housing, and rein in urban sprawl. The Charter of the New Urbanism also covers issues such as historic preservation, safe streets, green building, and the renovation of brownfield land.