25 Great Ideas of New Urbanism 1 Cover photo: Lancaster Boulevard in Lancaster, California. Source: City of Lancaster. Photo by Tamara Leigh Photography. Street design by Moule & Polyzoides. 25 GREAT IDEAS OF NEW URBANISM Author: Robert Steuteville, CNU Senior Dyer, Victor Dover, Hank Dittmar, Brian Communications Advisor and Public Square Falk, Tom Low, Paul Crabtree, Dan Burden, editor Wesley Marshall, Dhiru Thadani, Howard Blackson, Elizabeth Moule, Emily Talen, CNU staff contributors: Benjamin Crowther, Andres Duany, Sandy Sorlien, Norman Program Fellow; Mallory Baches, Program Garrick, Marcy McInelly, Shelley Poticha, Coordinator; Moira Albanese, Program Christopher Coes, Jennifer Hurley, Bill Assistant; Luke Miller, Project Assistant; Lisa Lennertz, Susan Henderson, David Dixon, Schamess, Communications Manager Doug Farr, Jessica Millman, Daniel Solomon, Murphy Antoine, Peter Park, Patrick Kennedy The 25 great idea interviews were published as articles on Public Square: A CNU The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) Journal, and edited for this book. See www. helps create vibrant and walkable cities, towns, cnu.org/publicsquare/category/great-ideas and neighborhoods where people have diverse choices for how they live, work, shop, and get Interviewees: Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Jeff around. People want to live in well-designed Speck, Dan Parolek, Karen Parolek, Paddy places that are unique and authentic. CNU’s Steinschneider, Donald Shoup, Jeffrey Tumlin, mission is to help build those places. John Anderson, Eric Kronberg, Marianne Cusato, Bruce Tolar, Charles Marohn, Joe Public Square: A CNU Journal is a Minicozzi, Mike Lydon, Tony Garcia, Seth publication dedicated to illuminating and Harry, Robert Gibbs, Ellen Dunham-Jones, cultivating best practices in urbanism in the Galina Tachieva, Stefanos Polyzoides, John US and beyond. Public Square is powered by Torti, Vince Graham, Katie Urban, Geoff the Congress for the New Urbanism. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank all of the interviewees listed above and CNU staff—especially President and CEO Lynn Richards—who supported me through- out this process. More than that, I thank the visionary and capable planners, architects, developers, urban designers, engineers, real estate professionals, leaders, and citizens who have made the Great Ideas a reality. — Robert Steuteville October, 2018 2 CONTENTS P4 >> Timeline P8 >> Introduction P10 >> Planning P11 >> 1. Pedestrian shed and the 5-minute walk P19 >> 2. Building better suburbs through retrofit P25 >> 3. The rural-to-urban Transect P34 >> 4. Sustainable urbanism P40 >> 5. The polycentric region P47 >> Transportation P48 >> 6 . Rethinking parking P55 >> 7. Context-based street design P61 >> 8. Interconnected street networks P69 >> 9. Freeways Without Futures P77 >> Implementation P78 >> 10. Tactical Urbanism P86 >> 11. Doing the math for cities and towns P92 >> 12. Form-based codes P100 >> 13. Lean Urbanism P108 >> 14. Multidisciplinary design charrette P114 >> Architecture P115 >> 15. Architecture that puts the city first P124 >> 16. The public realm P131 >> 17. The Charter of the New Urbanism P139 >> Housing P140 >> 18. Missing middle housing P147 >> 19. Katrina cottages P154 >> 20. Public housing that engages the city P162 >> Development P163 >> 21. Incremental development P171 >> 22. Mixed-use urban centers P180 >> 23. Traditional neighborhood development P188 >> 24. Transit-oriented development P196 >> 25. Light Imprint for green infrastructure P204 >> About the author 3 TIMELINE OF THE GREAT IDEAS Year Idea # Description 1961 1, 8, 16 The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs, is published. 1965 8 A City is Not a Tree, an essay by Christopher Alexander, is published. 1968 7, 16 The Street, a studio to design streets as public spaces is taught by Charles Moore, Kent Bloomer, and Ray Gindroz at Yale University. 1971 16 Life Between Buildings, by Jan Gehl, is published. 1977 15 Christopher Alexander’s book, A Pattern Language, is published. 1981 1, 13, 23, Seaside, Florida, the first traditional neighborhood development, is designed and founded. Seaside uses 25 development concepts that would later be called Lean and Light Imprint. 1983 12 The code for Seaside Florida is the first traditional neighborhood development code written, a precursor to form-based codes. 1983 16 Leon Krier draws his influential cartoon “Civitas (The True City)” that claries how civic buildings and spaces combine with private buildings, connected by streets, to form a traditional mixed-use city. 1986 2 Mashpee Commons in Mashpee, Massachusetts, the first suburban retrofit, is designed. 1988 23 Poundbury is designed by Leon Krier for the Duchy of Cornwall and Prince Charles. 1988 14 The first modern multiday, multidisciplinary community design charrette is conducted in Texas by Dua- ny Plater-Zyberk. 1988 23 Kentlands is designed in Gaithersburg, Maryland, by Duany Plater-Zyberk. 1988 22 Reston Town Center begins construction in Reston, Virginia. 1989 24 The Pedestrian Pocket Book by Peter Calthorpe and Douglas Kelbaugh is published. 1990 7, 8, 23 Walter Kulash gave a talk to the Annual Pedestrian Conference called Traditional Neighborhood Development: Will the Traffic Work? 1991 1 Diagram comparing traditional neighborhoods to sprawl is drawn by Tom Low at DPZ. 1991 17 The Ahwahnee Principles, a precursor to The Charter of the New Urbanism, are written by Elizabeth Moule, Stefanos Polyzoides, Peter Calthorpe, Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Michael Corbett, and edited by Judy Corbett, Peter Katz and Steve Weissman. 1991 2, 22 Mizner Park, the first mixed-use town center built on the former site of an enclosed mall, is completed in Boca Raton, Florida. 1992 6 Pasadena, California, created a parking benefit district in Old Pasadena, installing meters and using reve- nue to clean sidewalks and make streetscape improvements. The local economy boomed. 1993 1-25 The Congress for the New Urbanism is founded at CNU I in Alexandria, Virginia. 1993 5 The Next American Metropolis, a book by Peter Calthorpe, is published. 1994 1, 5, 23 The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community, a book by Peter Katz, is published. 1994 5 Portland Metro completes the Portland 2040 plan, with Calthorpe Associates, creating a vision for a polycentric region connected by transit. 1994 20 Construction is completed for Diggs Town, the redevelopment of a public housing project in Norfolk, VA. The design by UDA employs many of the principles used in HUD’s HOPE VI program. 1995 23 Celebration breaks ground near Orlando, Florida—developed by the Disney corporation. 4 Year Idea # Description 1996 17 The Charter of the New Urbanism is signed in Charleston, South Carolina, by 266 attendees of CNU IV, including then-HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, brought in by CNU’s first Executive Director Peter Katz. 1996 20 Then-HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros employs CNU leaders to write design guidelines for HOPE VI , the most important public housing program in recent decades. New urbanists lead at least two large seminars to train HUD officials in new urban design. 1997 3 The Transect is presented by Andres Duany in CNU V in Toronto as part of The Lexicon of the New Urbanism. 1997 8 The City of Portland agrees with developers to extend the city’s fine-grained grid of 200-by-200-foot blocks to create the Pearl District, which writer Philip Langdon calls the “best large walkable urban neighborhood created in the core of an American city” in recent decades. 1997 (circa) 22, 24 Bethesda Row, a transit-oriented town center in Bethesda, Maryland, is under construction. 1997 7 Peter Swift presents his study Residential Street Typology and Injury Accident Frequency at CNU V, including botht motor vehicle and residential fire injuries, concluding that narrow, walkable urban streets are the safest. 1998 23, 25 Habersham breaks ground near Beaufort, South Carolina—using the principles of what would be called “Light Imprint” New Urbanism. 1998 20 Pleasant View Gardens HOPE VI revitalization is completed in Baltimore, Maryland. The design by Torti Gallas and Partners wins an AIA Urban Design Award. Many more award-winning HOPE VI’s would follow. 1999 5 The Envision Utah plan employs scenario planning to create a vision for better transit and more compact growth along the cities of the Wasatch Front. 1999 4 US EPA finds that environmental impacts are lower for New Urbanism than Conventional Suburban De- velopment. 2000 5 The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl, by Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton, is published. 2000 1 Suburban Nation, a book by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, is published. 2000 3 First published article on Transect-based planning and coding appears in New Urban News. 2000 12 First draft of the Smart Code is published by DPZ—by 2007, this code was made available for free in an eletronic format. 2001 17 CNU’s first annual Charter Awards are given, honoring projects designed according to Charter of the New Urbanism principles. 2002 4 Scott Bernstein of the Center for Neighborhood Technology produced maps that showed that walkable towns and cities generate lower carbon emissions per person. These maps were later incorporated into CNT’s H&T Index. 2002 9 A boulevard opens on the former site of San Francisco’s Embarcadero Freeway, which was damaged by the Loma Prieta earthquake. 2002 9 Octavia Boulevard opens on the former site of San Francisco’s Central Freeway spur, which was damaged by the Loma Prieta earthquake. 2002 2 CNU publishes Greyfields into Goldfields, by Lee Sobel, about turning dying malls into town centers. 2002 2 Belmar in Lakewood, Colorado. breaks ground, replacing an obsolete, enclosed shopping mall. the mas- ter plan is by Elkus/Manfredi. 5 Year Idea # Description 2002 9 The Park East Freeway, an 0.8-mile spur, is demolished in Milwaukee, to be replaced by surface streets and 26 acres of developable land on all or part of 28 blocks. By 2006, land values had risen 180 percent and major development was underway—construction that continues today. 2002 14 The National Charrette Institute is founded by Bill Lennertz and Steve Coyle.