COVER STORY, JANUARY 2005

REINVENTING THE AMERICAN DREAM
New Urbanism has designs on reinvigorating real estate.
Kevin James

Aliso Viejo Town Center in Orange County, California, embraces the mixed-use, integrated design of New Urbanism.

The early years of the 20th century were marked by a surge in urban population in the United States, as the country was transformed from an agrarian nation into an industrial urban giant. Lured by the promise of work and a better life, people saw the American dream change from its agrarian farmer beginnings into that of modern metropolitan promise. Following World War II, the surge in the ranks of the affluent middle class, as well as the ever-growing presence of the automobile, led to the emergence of the suburbs. These bedroom communities quickly spread over formerly vacant land, growing at an exponential rate and leading to a new American phrase — urban sprawl. Over the course of the past 50 years, these communities have been pushed farther and farther from the great metropolitan cores, as people search for affordable homes in exchange for longer and longer commutes to work.

This movement from the cities into the suburbs led to urban decay and blight in many of the great American metropolises. The bedroom communities born of the urban exodus were plagued by their own lack of community and isolation — not just from the cities, but from the very neighborhoods within these new developments. Zoning requirements of the new communities isolated housing from retail, retail from office, office from industrial, and on and on. Essentially, this major population shift destroyed the vitality of the cities and planned the lack of vitality in the suburbs before it could even begin. Rather than dynamic communities where people and industry interacted, these suburbs lacked the very nature of community and replaced it with segregated zones and ever-growing miles of roadway and congestion.

With the dawning of the 21st century, planners seek to restore the lost vitality of the cities as well as deliver it to the suburbs, to recreate the lost sense of community in the former, and to instill it in the latter. New Urbanism seeks to reinvent the American dream by reconfiguring the sprawling suburbs into communities of real neighborhoods and diverse districts, to conserve natural environments and to preserve the legacy of our built environments.

The abandonment of the cities by many of its residents led to the sprawling residential suburbs of America. As these new municipalities began to grow, a fundamental flaw in the typical zoning of these regions conspired to strangle any sense of community from these new developments while encouraging sprawl. These zoning provisions typically required segregated components of housing subdivisions, shopping centers, office parks, civic institutions and miles of roadways.

New Urbanism encourages the creation of gathering places like this one at Aliso Viejo Town Center.

This attempt to divide these municipalities into distinct and separated regions ignored the fundamental principal required for healthy communities to grow — communal space. These zoning requirements banned the natural vitality that springs from the creative chaos of integrated communities where people can interact, exchange and share in their life’s pursuits. It strangled the communities and imprisoned its residents in hours of automotive congestion.

Indeed, perhaps the most harmful of the effects of urban sprawl has been the ever-growing reliance upon lengthy (and slower and slower) commutes — not just commutes to and from work, but from home to the grocery store, to schools, to parks, to theaters, etc. Walking in our modern suburban landscape is no longer an option — the inherently segregated nature of these municipalities requires a reliance on our automobiles. This reliance leads to terrible congestion of our roadways — a growing urban disease that has typically been treated by adding more lanes of roadway.

The New Urbanism of the 21st century seeks to cure the fundamental flaws of our urban areas by essentially embracing old ideas of community. New Urbanism is really not new, but time-honored and tested. Indeed, those of us who practice New Urbanism believe that the design of new places should be modeled on old places that work, such as the old English villages where communities naturally developed around communal space, and where the different aspects of life were integrated.

New Urbanism is not merely an issue of aesthetics. Rather, it is concerned with building strong neighborhoods and cities, to make something that contributes towards a better village, a better town, a better landscape or country without a blueprint that strangles the natural vitality of community. Projects under the mantle of New Urbanism emphasize neighborhoods, districts and corridors. They form identifiable areas that encourage citizens to take responsibility for their maintenance and evolution. These projects provide physical definition of streets and public space; they are seamlessly linked to their surroundings; they are safe and secure while maintaining openness; they accommodate automobiles while respecting pedestrians; they encourage walking and visual interest; they are styled and landscaped appropriately to their local climate; they preserve history; and they embrace environmentally conscious design.

There are numerous cities and towns across America that are embracing the concept of New Urbanism without offering a fully developed definition. This lack of definition is an integral part of the movement, for it is the creative chaos of people that shape healthy communities and vibrant neighborhoods. Seattle; Santa Monica, California; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and San Francisco are all noteworthy adherents to the New Urbanism movement. They seek dynamic 24-hour communities where people live, work and play in the same place; where their growth is sustainable and healthy; where their residents interact naturally and develop true community bonds.

Another example of New Urbanism is San Diego. Beginning in the 1970s, the city of San Diego began to develop and implement a plan to revive the urban core, properly manage growth and reinvigorate the city. As a result of this initiative, San Diego effectively became the laboratory for modern urban development and management for the United States. The Center City Plan was adopted to reorganize development of the downtown core. The Center City Development Corporation, a public/private entity, was formed to realize the Center City Plan. The key component of the plan called for a resurgence of urban living in downtown San Diego. Developers were unwilling to invest millions to build new sites in a city whose affluent citizens were fleeing to the suburbs. Thus, the goal of the Center City Plan was to attract high-density development to the city center, which would serve as the mixed-use core of the metropolitan region.

One of the early successes of the Center City Development Corporation was the development of downtown San Diego. With the commitment of city leaders to revitalize the urban population, developers chose to move forward with the downtown project. While not under the aegis of the Center City Plan, the Gas Lamp Quarter also began to take shape at this time. In short order, the revitalization of San Diego was underway. The city demonstrated that New Urbanism was a viable and healthy approach to modern urban planning, and its success has led to the growing reliance upon the principles of this school of design.

New Urbanism is taking root in our smaller communities as well, in the very suburbs born out of the migration away from the urban core. North Natomas is a vibrant and growing bedroom community located just north of the California state capitol of Sacramento. Like most young communities, North Natomas is in need of retail and entertainment venues. The North Natomas Town Center will provide both in an eclectic outdoor site that draws on early 20th century small town environments for its aesthetic feel.

More than just a retail shopping center, the town center has been designed to provide a community gathering space with a civic center at the east end of the retail that includes a high school, public library and community college. To the north of the development are an extensive residential development and a regional park facility. The integration of the civic center and educational facilities with the outdoor cityscape allows the North Natomas Town Center to become the center of a young, vibrant community.

Similarly, the small town of Aliso Viejo, located in California’s Orange County, has approved a town center that embraces the mixed-use, integrated design of the New Urbanism school. The center will essentially serve as the town’s central business district, but the development combines restaurant, retail, entertainment and office uses. Park-like settings and lushly landscaped pathways encourage pedestrian traffic.

The American dream is increasingly one of energized variety, whether it be in an urban or suburban setting. The New Urbanism being embraced in the 21st century seeks to restore the sense of community undermined by urban sprawl, returning the vitality to our towns and cities. By restoring communal gathering places and designing neighborhoods where residents can live, work and play, the New Urbanism school of design seeks to replace traditional suburban life and the decay of the urban metropolises with thriving communities where neighbors are neighbors and communities are communities.

Kevin James is a managing principal with MCG Architecture.

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