Recapping new urbanism

The New Urban Transect, using images by Norman Rockwell to illustrate the various zones.

A couple weeks ago, the annual conference ("congress") for the Congress of New Urbanism was held in West Palm Beach, Florida. 

In advance of the meeting, the newsletter Better! Cities and Towns ran a three-part series by Peter Katz on the beginnings of the movement and the development of a relationship with HUD that led to the HOPEVI program which spearheaded redevelopment of public housing projects.  See "CNU at 20: A recollection," "The origins of the Congress for the New Urbanism," and "HopeVI and the inner city."

Interestingly enough, according to Katz' articles, some of the schisms in the movement today over what we might call new suburbanism and the development of greenfield tracts far from urban centers, but with new urban principles based on the Charter of the New Urbanism vs. focusing redevelopment at the core of a metropolitan region, with a focus on "infill" apparently were present at the beginning and still aren't resolved.

Erin Chantry, an urban designer at the firm Tindale-Oliver & Associates and blogger (At the Helm for the Public Realm) attended the congress and wrote eight dispatches related to conference sessions and her reactions. 

Her dispatches are a good introduction to the basic principles underlying smarter growth and well worth a read.