New Urbanists to lead design charrettes for Mississippi's Gulf Coast

The article Nation's leading professionals offer aid in Gulf Coast rebuilding, discusses the unprecedented effort to have the Congress for the New Urbanism lead a set of design workshops to shape the rebuilding of the communities destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.

According to email from Andres Duany, one of the founders and leading practitioners of New Urbanism, co-author of Suburban Nation and principle of the architect and planning firm Duany Plater-Zyberk, these charrettes will run from October 11th to the 18th.

From the article:

Duany met with Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour earlier this week to talk about rebuilding communities such as Biloxi, Gulfport and Pascagoula. Duany heads the planning and design firm Duany Plater-Zyberk and Co. along with his wife, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. The firm is widely recognized as a leader of New Urbanism, an international movement that among other things seeks to revitalize urban areas and end suburban sprawl. Duany said the need for rapid reconstruction along the Gulf Coast presents an unprecedented opportunity to improve the quality of housing and planning by applying the tenets of New Urbanism.

New Urbanists tout traditional town planning, with its compact towns and neighborhoods and pedestrian-friendly streets, as an alternative to car-dependent suburban sprawl. The pattern of subdivisions and strip malls, they say, waste energy and land, ravage the environment and strip established communities of their sense of place.

"In Mississippi it's about getting it done right, having it better than it was before. This is a tremendous opportunity to do that," Duany said. "We want to create areas that are more diverse, less auto dependent, more environmentally friendly and more secure from hurricanes."