I've just been looking up new urbanism in America and it seems to be a joke. The suburbs have massive houses built a metre apart and no fences. There deosn't seem to be an privacy and it isn't an more eficient than normal subruban estates. So what is the point? Is new urbanism a joke?

http://www.cyburbia.org/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=506&page=1&sort=1&perpage=9&=

God no. Please not in Australia, in particular in Sydney.

A lot of those pictures, in fact most of them, reflect almost none of the New Urbanist planning principles.

If that is the example you're going on, then it's hard to see how anyone could like new urbanism. But trust me, it's a lot more than what you're giving it credit for. It's one of the first hollistic approaches to breaking the cycle of car dependence that has been formed by separating land uses. It has its failing points in my opinion, it appears to hold some of the same utopian principles that have plagued earlier movements like garden city, but at least it's something.

Nothing in planning is perfect. Every time you plan an apprpriate response to urban problems, you usually create another. It's what's going to keep us employed, live with it :)

Good for you, yob! :okay:

ABS, I think you looked at the wrong pictures because what you're describing doesn't sound like New Urbanism to me.

It's not that they're the wrong pictures, it's more that new urbanism is the sum of all its parts, so single photographs don't show how the whole thing is supposed to work.

We also have to keep in mind that a lot of those residential environments look sterile because they are new developments - give the trees 30 years to grow.

New Urbanism developments in America are really tacky. Their faux colonial exteriors. Yuck. For contemporary-looking new urbanism developments you should look to Canada (good old Canucks) and Australia.

Here's some pics of Newington - an Australian example of new urbanism:
http://madmartigan.net/smeghead/Dsc03161.jpg
http://madmartigan.net/smeghead/Dsc03128.jpg
http://madmartigan.net/smeghead/Dsc03142.jpg
http://madmartigan.net/smeghead/Dsc03119.jpg

There's 'new urbanism' and there's what developers call 'new urbanism'. The two are as different as women and trilobites.

The vast majority of suburban developers in the US have used the banner of 'new urbanism' to serve their own ends, i.e cost cutting and maximising profit, such as shoving more houses on the same plot of of land and decreasing the amount of roads and paving per household, all without trying to do the the hard stuff. By hard stuff, I mean actually designing adequate housing that suits the site (climate, privacy, useful land/gardens etc) and perhaps most importantly, mixing of zones.

Without mixing zones, 'new urbanism' (as the developers call it) really isn't 'new urbanism' at all. It's simply denser suburbanism and that's what you see in a lot of these US developments. So yes, you're right (im my opinion) that your examples are crap, but no, it's not really new urbanism.

Where did you get those photos of Newington from Smeghead, they are awesome. Just what I needed. But yeah the problem wasn't the concept of new urbanism, but the fact that the yanks were tacking on a heritage facade and pretending that it was new urbanism. For one of my uni assignments I have to do a proposal to redevelopm the Boggo Road Gaol site in Dutton Park. My proposal is for approx 160 apartments in 5 separate 3 storey blocks and approx 100 townhouses in a gated complex.

Hey Smeghead could I please use those phtos in an assignment? :)

I took those photos myself for an assignment where I had to develop a Master Plan for a small residential estate.

Well I've got to develop a masterplan for the 9.5ha Boggo road Gaol site in Dutton Park in Brisbane. Doing all the market analysis and everything is really annoying.

Where did you get those photos of Newington from Smeghead, they are awesome. Just what I needed. But yeah the problem wasn't the concept of new urbanism, but the fact that the yanks were tacking on a heritage facade and pretending that it was new urbanism. For one of my uni assignments I have to do a proposal to redevelopm the Boggo Road Gaol site in Dutton Park. My proposal is for approx 160 apartments in 5 separate 3 storey blocks and approx 100 townhouses in a gated complex.


ABS! Gating your complex isn't very New Urbanistic!! Gated communities are the unfortunate physical representation of residential segregation! Design your complex so as to employ passive surveillance of open spaces and encourage community activity so that a "neighbourhood watch" type thing develops naturally through repore between neighbours and you'll get a better mark. :)

The development will be targeted towards overseas students wnating to go to the University Of Queensland at St Lucia just across the river. They are scared of a new country and are willing to pay big dollars for good accomodation. A gated townhouse complex can milk thier fears and make money.

Hahahahahaha

Taking advantage of the foreighners' fears lol.

priceless.

Yes I'm such a socially responsible planning student. ;D

I don't care what the development looks like as long as it makes money.

The development will be targeted towards overseas students wnating to go to the University Of Queensland at St Lucia just across the river. They are scared of a new country and are willing to pay big dollars for good accomodation. A gated townhouse complex can milk thier fears and make money.

I think you've just described a housing project for a bunch of crocodile-hunter-type Aussies living in bloody Saudi Arabia!

In my night-time trawls across the city, I see more overseas students out at 1 and 2 and 3am eating and drinking and 'living' than their local counterparts who've all headed home for sleepy suburbia long before at sundown, except on friday and saturday nights, when we band together and travel into the city in large packs. To me it looks like we're more scared of them than they are of us, and you're now planning to lock them in! :)

To reaffirm what finn said, gated communities are the antithesis of new urbanism!

Meh, the development brief for Boggo Road never asked for new urbanism principles to be used. :hahaha:

The main problem with New Urbanist design...is that they really aren't New Urbanism....just the same old suburban development with shopping malls and pretend victorian squares.

Another major problem with New Urbanism, is that it thinks it can replicate the complexities of an urban form which is, and has been evolving to the needs of the community....all in one fell swoop. A true New Urbanist community needs to be walkable with sustainable and adaptable attributes, which is not designed and built by one company with a "master plan". Show me one "old" urban community that was built that way.

Not to say that new development can't be good....just more along the lines of "smart growth", rather than "new urbanism".

Read Jane Jacobs.






KGB

Oops.

Yes I'm such a socially responsible planning student. ;D

I don't care what the development looks like as long as it makes money.

so true but so sad...

meh, you don't need to take that comment seriously. :jk: