World War II: The New Urban Movement

New Urbanism

New Urbanism is the urban

movement that promotes walkable

neighborhoods containing a range of housing

and job types. This movement started in the

1980’s and has gradually influenced many

aspects of real estate development, urban

planning, and municipal land-use strategies.

New Urbanism was strongly influenced by

urban practices and were popular until the rise of the automobile prior to World War II. This

movement encompasses principles like Transit Oriented Development and Traditional

Neighborhood Design. These principles also relate to Environmentalism, Smart growth and

With the environmentalism aspect of New Urbanism, this gives way where architects,

urban planners and developers to have a less of an

Transit- Oriented Development is high-density, mixed-use

development within walking distance (usually about ½ mile) to a transit station. (Wheeler, 2004,

p. 65) Traditional Neighborhood Design is development of a complete neighborhood or town

using traditional town planning principles. Often this principle focuses on the reuse of buildings

Like previously said, New Urbanism was centered on the idea of creating walkable

communities that link neighborhoods to parks to cities. This all started before World War II

when we had the design plan to walk everywhere and create cities that were connected. This

method had the same architecture as Europe did and America was inspired. But it quickly fell

apart when after World War II ended and the revolution of cars and transportation and building

drivable cities and towns. This is what we are trying to fix today. (Silver, "New Urbanism and

Planning: Back to the Future")

We would go into the mid-20th century when urban planners would design and use these ideas.

For most of human history this meant a city that was entirely walkable, although with

This all happened after World War II when urban

planning largely centered on the use of municipal zoning ordinances to segregate residential

from commercial and industrial development, and focused on the construction of low-density

single-family detached houses as the preferred housing format for the growing middle class.

(Silver, "New Urbanism and Planning: Back to the Future")

In 1991, New Urbanism developed more strongly when the Local Government

Commission, a nonprofit group in Sacramento, California, invited several architects, including

Peter Calthorpe, Michael Corbett, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk among others, to

Yosemite National Park to develop a set of principles for land use planning that focused on the

community and its livability. These principles were called the Ahwahnee Principles. (Amanda

Brney, "New Urbanism: Imagine a City without Cars")

But times have changed and we are seeing the errors in our ways and we must approach

planning for the future in the most sustainable and realistic way. We are seeing an influx of

communities that are taking these principles serious and learning from history to develop better

communities and be more