What is New Urbanism?

this video is sponsored by curiosity stream get access to 2400 documentaries and nonfiction titles free for one month by following the link in the description I'm here in celebration Florida a community of about 7500 people down the road from the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World and that's just about everything you'd expect from a city this size it has a nice Main Street houses apartments businesses schools and a hospital I've been walking around celebration for a little while now and I gotta say it's it's pretty pleasant you'll be surprised to learn then that there are some people have very negative feelings towards communities like this new urbanist communities what is new urbanism and why is it so controversial let's start by telling the story of celebration the story begins in Florida but not here actually in a town called seaside over in the Florida Panhandle it was designed by architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plato's I Burke back in the 1980s you may recognize this community as the home of Truman Burbank from the movie The Truman Show the entire community was designed to be pedestrian oriented and hearken back to the southern beach communities of the past the architects created their own code to govern the design of buildings which they stipulated must have a mix of styles and uses well done architects such as Leon Cryer Steven Holl Robert Stern and Samuel Mockbee all designed buildings in the community see sites impact was immediate the community was viewed as the beginning of a new paradigm for urban design and planning seaside in other early new urbanist communities like Kent --lens in Maryland or a response to the unworkable ugly small of the u.s. suburb many suburban communities didn't have sidewalks the front facade of their house is mostly garage the lawns were huge and there were no schools or stores to walk to early new urbanist projects prove that walkable attracted development could get built instead I was gonna do all these talking head shots in celebration on location but it was just too hot and I was getting too sweaty so let's do the rest of these here in the C beautiful studio house seeing that these projects could be the start of a movement Duany platers i burke and other architects and designers got together and drafted the awanee principles in 1991 which laid out the basic principles for what they called the new urbanism there are 15 of these so I'm not gonna list them all but here are some of the highlights walkable communities transit oriented development ample open space housing for a wide variety of incomes communities with well-defined centers and edges and sustainable development practices these principles all sound good but here in 2019 they don't sound very revolutionary but back in 1991 this kind of thing was a big deal especially when communities started getting built that achieved some of the goals new urbanism began to catch on communities began to pop up all over the United States including one right here in Central Florida like I said in the beginning of this video celebration is a new urbanist community built eight years after seaside but the origins of celebration can actually be traced all the way back to the 1960s to Walt Disney the man himself when he proposed an experimental prototype community of tomorrow or Epke the city never got built and it got turned into a theme park but the idea of a Disney City stuck around the company until Disney CEO Michael Eisner decided to go for it instead of looking to the future Eisner and Disney looked to the past both using seaside and traditional neighborhood design as a precedent it was pretty much as different of a community from Epcot as you can get residents began moving to celebration 25 years ago in 1994 Disney acted as the developer pour billions of dollars into what is one of the largest new urbanist communities to date once residents began moving in Disney de-annex celebration from their property so residents wouldn't have voting rights in Disney's private government you can see my video on this very topic the community suffered some growing pains but today it is a pleasant community filled with residents workers and tourists so let's get to the second question in this video why is it place like celebrations so controversial there are lots of critiques of new urbanism so I'm gonna focus on one big one for this video that new urbanism is actually just new suburban ism a veneer over the same sprawling developments as before here's a quote to sum up the critique there is little urbanity in the new urbanism like other suburbs the neo-traditional models are essentially anti urban sanitized versions of the small town and they exclude much of what it takes to make a metropolitan region work you'll notice a disconnect here between calling new urbanism anti urban and all the principles I mentioned before like walkability sustainability and housing for all income groups there seem to be a gap between the stated goals in new urbanism and some of their built projects one important reason for that gap is that achieving all of the principles of new urbanism in a community project like celebration is really difficult you can think of New Urbanism is three layers the first layer is the aesthetic style of New Urbanism the second is the urban design of new urbanist communities and the third is land use it's relatively easy to design a community that looks new urban ish with traditional architecture and front porches because it's so easy many so-called new urbanist developments stop there and absolutely warrant the new suburban ISM label this is also the reason new urbanism became synonymous with architectural styles that take cues from small towns of the past something the movement is still trying to shake even as new urbanist projects are built in urban areas with modern designs the second step includes urban design things like sidewalks alleyways homes clustered in distinct neighborhoods and plentiful parks and open spaces this level of Community Design requires more effort and fewer developers go this extra mile communities that do incorporate new urbanist urban design achieve more of the principles of new urbanism finally even fewer new urbanist communities tackle complex land-use issues like incorporating mixed-use development or affordable housing these are both major needs in the suburbs and if most new urbanist communities don't tackle these what's the point really here in celebration the community is large enough that Disney could begin to address mixed-use developments and affordable housing celebration has a Main Street in downtown with shops offices and apartments there are a variety of housing types from granny flats above garages to large single-family homes there aren't any below market rate housing that is affordable to low income families however the state of Florida requires developments of a certain size to contribute to the planning or construction of affordable housing developers can either build that housing on-site or pay a fee to the local government for the planning or construction of affordable housing elsewhere Disney paid a three hundred thousand dollar fee to Osceola County and called it a day Disney will argue that housing in Osceola County is already pretty affordable especially compared to high-cost metros like San Francisco or New York others contend that there are very few places Disney park employees could afford to live in celebration so while not perfect celebration meets some of the land development goals of New Urbanism why does so few communities do so it's more about how land development works in the United States and less about how New Urbanism works the cities in the United States don't grow a house by house around the edges most of the time they grow in big chunks as farms and rural land are sold to large real estate development company the land is rezone to allow for development or it may have be zoned for development already either way the zoning laws and subdivision ordinances of the municipality set limits on how the land can be developed many of the zoning laws in the United States are strict in all the wrong ways they require streets to be wider than the developers would want to build on their own often zoning stipulates that Lots have to be a certain minimum size which can preclude the small lot single-family housing that good new urbanist communities often include at the same time zoning laws can be completely silent on the character and architecture of the development as well as the provision of pedestrian and bicycle amenities and these are just a few of the examples at the same time real estate development companies are not designed to build mixed-use development most developers focus on one segment of the market like retail or single-family housing building a community with retail apartments single-family homes and job centers is a challenging project most developers aren't cut out for it can also be challenging for developers to offer all of these amenities of a new urban like parks open space schools and more and keep housing prices at a reasonable level costs can also creep up if the developer has to seek variances or exceptions to the restrictive zoning code to build their vision new Urbanists are typically planners urban designers and architects hired by developers to design communities they fully understand the goals of new urbanism but I have to achieve these goals in a development environment that works against them at every turn here in celebration Disney had a utopian vision for this community just like it has Epcot in the 60s as a developer they bought into the goals of New Urbanism Disney also had a lot of control over the land and could design its own zoning code for celebration this new urbanist community didn't have the same roadblocks as others faced I could go on and on discussing the debates of her new urbanism but I think this video gives you a basic understanding of what it is and what people are saying about it I tend to agree with critics who say that new urbanist projects don't often live up to the stated goals of the movement but at the same time I think they should be applauded for trying to improve suburban development some criticize new Urbanists for working within the broken land development system but I think it's a pretty pragmatic strategy I agree that there need to be wholesale changes in how land is developed here in the United States but until that time comes incremental changes better than nothing if you've made it this far in the video you probably liked videos about cities did you know that you can check out dozens of documentaries in series about cities over at curiosity stream when I joined the first thing I did was search for videos about City Planning and I was excited to find a lot of videos on topics from the cities of the future to ancient cities I did a study abroad in Rome way back when so I immediately gravitated toward this documentary all about the cool things under Rome including aqueducts and sewers I was sucked in pretty much immediately and if for some reason you have interests outside of cities curiosity stream has you covered there are over 2,400 other titles on the service including content featuring Stephen Hawking David Attenborough Jane Goodall and more a curiosity stream membership is ridiculously cheap starting at just $2.99 a month and if you got a curiosity stream slash City Beautiful you get unlimited access to the world's top documentaries and nonfiction series if you enter the promo code city beautiful when prompted during the signup process your membership is completely free for the first 30 days so go check it out you

Channel: City Beautiful

Views: 393,502

Keywords: city planning, town planning, urban planning, urban design, new urbanism, celebration florida, celebration disney, michael eisner, new suburbanism, suburban sprawl, urban sprawl, seaside florida, kentlands, epcot, walt disney world, traditional neighborhood development, main street, mixed use development

Id: sOaXfc9MuKc

Length: 10min 7sec (607 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 25 2019