Quote of the day

David of the blog The Practical Cyclist commented on an earlier post, so I checked out his blog, only to find this great point, in the entry Randall O'Toole got me to thinking...

but New Urbanism looks a lot like the Garden City movement, and that ain't good.

That's greenfield new urbanism in a nutshell. It does make the suburbs better, but it doesn't refocus development on the core, on extant places. Fundamentally, the leading planning philosophies from 1895 to about oh, last year, are anti-city. This started with the Garden Cities.

Fred Kent of Project for Public Spaces calls NU -- New Suburbanism.

Now, NUists will counter about how many projects are in the cities. But are infill projects espousing traditional design and/or urban design principles truly "New" urban, or merely properly urban.

However, I do appreciate "new urbanism" for its renewed focus on urban design principles.

A good place to get learned is the Urban Design Compendium from English Partnerships. Or the book Creating a Vibrant City Center, published by ULI.

Images from a webpage on the book, GARDEN CITIES OF TO-MORROW.