• Proposed: A new California city

    California Forever in the Central Valley offers an opportunity to test walkable community-building on a scale we haven’t seen in a century.
    At the first Congress for the New Urbanism in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1993, planning Professor Robert Fishman described the concept of “mass suburbia” taking hold in America in the years after World War II. A synonym is “sprawl.” New urbanists have described the physical characteristics of sprawl...Read more

  • Prices mounting in the Green Mountains

    When protecting nature goes too far.
    Hear “Vermont” and a certain vision passes through one’s head: Green Mountains with bucolic small towns. It comes as no surprise that Vermonters know this and love their scenery. To protect it, they’ve passed some of the heftiest environmental protection and development-regulation laws in the...Read more

  • Video tells the tale of impressive Belgian New Urbanism

    A town extension of seaside resort took a week to design, but it has been 25 years in the making.
    A team of new urbanists went to Belgium in 1998 to design a small new neighborhood, an extension of a seaside resort town, at the invitation of the mayor. A weeklong charrette produced an impressive town plan and renderings, along with an implementation kit—including design guidelines, a platting...Read more

  • Six urban center types transforming cities

    A new book by the eminent urbanist Jonathan Barnett will make you more optimistic about US cities and their growth.
    Jonathan Barnett has been at the forefront of urban planning for an astonishingly long time. From 1967 to 1971, Barnett was director of urban design for New York City’s Department of City Planning under reform Mayor John Lindsay. Over the last half-century, he has held long tenures as a professor...Read more