Walkable sprawl

as a description for new urbanism. Check out the entry, Thoughts on Transit and New Urbanism, from The Overhead Wire.

-- Yes, new urbanism is mostly about greenfield development.

-- Yes, increasingly the developments are farther and farther from the core of the region.

-- Yes, the farther people live from the core, the more likely they are to hate the city and not be too focused on urbanity.

-- Yes there are new urbanist infill projects.

-- Yes, new urbanism is one of the "instigators" for a reappreciation of the principles of urban design, the principles that make city living worthwhile, and have been helpful in countering "inward suburbanization" of the city.

-- In particular New Urbanism has spearheaded the recognition of the value of mixed use rather than homogeneous zoned districts, articulated by Jane Jacobs in Death and Life of Great American Cities in 1961

-- Systems created by the New Urbanists including the Charter for the New Urbanism, the modernized concept of the transect (Kropotkin did one first, in the 1800s), and the Smart Code are impressive.

-- Plus, the rigor and focus on research is impressive.

-- Andres Duany and many other proponents of New Urbanism are also very impressive.

-- But Smart Codes are about "choice," providing inducements if developers do the right thing. And too many developers are happy with crap, so inducements don't always matter.

-- Yes, the holier than thou attitude of the typical new urbanist is really grating.

-- Yes, lots of people call their projects new urbanist because that's a good marketing term. But the projects don't really meet the ideals of the Charter.

-- And Cities in Full is probably a more important book, as good as Suburban Nation is.

-- And Fred Kent of Project for Public Spaces is right when he calls new urbanism new suburbanism,

-- because, sure, while there are plenty of new urban infill projects, infill as a process existed long before new urbanism and the reality is in terms of the number of dwelling units produced, etc., new urbanism mostly creates greenfield development

-- But, it's better to have better development than crap in the suburbs, and you can begin to repattern the crap as long as you have some quality nodes.

The Transect of Norman Rockwell

My term for it for many years has been "smarter sprawl." You can look it up in the pro-urb archives... and I militantly call myself an old urbanist, focused on revitalizing and repopulating center cities.