Are You Embracing New Urbanism Yet? What Are You Waiting For?

Grant Cunningham, Tuesday, October 4, 2016

The movement for new, sustainable, and healthy urbanism continues to expand its reach this week with the kickoff of the fourth annual New Urbanism Film Festival (NUFF) in Los Angeles. Featuring such films as "Through the Place" and "Accidental Parkland," the festival introduces the movement to a new medium through a variety of activities including film screenings and public planning and design panels, among others.

CityWatch reporter Tim Deegan details the NUFF intinerary for the next week and contemplates its possible interaction with contemporary and extant urban issues in Los Angeles. From his piece:

"Think for a minute about how much time you spend each day in your car, moving about from home to work, to shop, to play, and then overlay that with how much frustration you feel with traffic and hassles with parking. Once calculated, look at the other side of the coin: what if you could exist just fine in a ten-square block area that you call “home”, or your ”bubble”, where you can live, work, shop and play? Designers and planners call living in a “bubble” like this the “new urbanism”, and it’s becoming contagious: people are discovering it to be a solution to gridlock, the cousin of overdevelopment. 

If “new urbanism” is new to you, what better way get on the fast-track to expand your knowledge of it than by attending the Fourth Annual New Urbanism Film Festival, (NUFF) opening October 6 and running through the weekend, an event that has become very popular and well-attended over the past few years. It’s fun and educational to watch the many short films that define new urbanism, listen to panel discussions, take neighborhood walks with designers and planners, and to meet and chat with seasoned new urbanists and newcomers who want to join the growing movement by finding common sense solutions to living in the huge urban mass of Los Angeles."

For the full story, read more at City Watch.