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| New Urbanism is a quality of life movement that promotes the neighborhood as the building block of a healthy region. It offers an alternative to suburban sprawl and the decaying cities it leaves behind by providing the tools to create economically, environmentally, and socially healthy communities that include: • A range of housing options for all types of people • Public places that help create community and nurture civic culture • Shopping, work, school, and recreation choices within walking distance, allowing a car to be a choice, not a necessity • A  respect for the environment and our built heritage. |
| A new village, Abacoa, near Jupiter, Florida photo courtesy of New Urban News |
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| "In places like Detroit, Houston, and Atlanta, people have gone so bonkers over automobiles that they forgot about the people. More people want to live in a place where they can walk to the store or to the park -- and that's impossible in so many modern suburbs."
--Dan Burden, planning consultant and president of Walkable Communities, quoted in the Detroit News, |
 Maps by Gail Dennis/Source: The Next American Metropolis, by Peter Calthorpe |
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| "What people notice first [about the suburbs] is that the traffic doesn't work. Commuting time and the great distances from home to shopping to work to entertainment all rank high among their complaints. If you commute an hour a day to work and an hour back, you're spending twelve unproductive working weeks in the car each year being stressed and not doing what you want." --Andres Duany, architect with Duany Plater- Zyberk in Miami, Florida, and co-founder of the New Urbanism movement, quoted in Preservation Magazine, May/June 1992 |
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| Downtown Holland, Michigan | |
 Greg Holcombe |
"Density is definitely the D word. But if you ask people, 'Would you like to be able to walk to the library?' 'Would you like to be able to walk to the store?' 'Do you know that two-thirds of the trips you're taking in your automobile are not the commute, not travel, but just shop and drop?' If you ask them about quality-of- life issues that are important to them, they end up describing density." --Jane Holtz Kay, author of Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back, quoted in Orion Afield,Winter 1999/2000 |
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| Apedestrian bridge in Chattanooga, Tennessee |
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 David Humber |
"Traditional downtowns or older cities are now being re-imagined by people. Instead of places where you get blue collar jobs, which is the mid-century view of the city, they're being re-assimilated in the consciousness of Americans as places of culture, leisure, entertainment, and service sector jobs. This is one of the most interesting changes in turn-of- the-century American society. There's this amazing shift from the city as a place where you live because you can't afford to live anywhere else to a place where you have fun." --Alex Krieger, chairman of the Department of Urban Planning and Design at Harvard University, quoted in the New York Times, November 3, 1998 |
from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such."--Aldo Leopold, renowned conservationist, from his A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949
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