Neotraditional planning: A new strategy for building neighborhoods?

Neotraditional planning is an increasingly discussed strategy for building neighborhoods in the United States. To its proponents this urban design-based planning model corrects the flaws inherent in the conventional low density suburban planning that has dominated land use in the United States in the post-World War II era. Neotraditional planning proposes to foster neighborliness and community life through the re-creation of idealized small towns from the early twentieth century. Borrowing design and site planning standards, pedestrianism is encouraged and automobile travel discouraged. This paper presents an assessment of the neotraditional planning model and its effectiveness in creating functioning neighborhoods. The analysis finds serious deficiencies with the community building capacity of this planning paradigm. The progressive rhetoric of neotraditionalism does not match empirical application of the approach. Reasons for this failure are presented.