A Review of the Contextual Adaptability of Three Contemporary Urban Paradigms: New Urbanism, Urban Village and Urban Renaissance

By the beginning of the third millennium, environment has become an issue of global importance. Changes arising from globalization has led to the formation of concerns that have inevitably been effective in the field of urban planning /design. New paradigms pertaining to urban policies have become pervasive all over the world, ignorant of the country’s local context. Lack of attention to contextual compliance underlying some of these paradigms have caused extremes in some cases that intensifies local-global dualities. This is especially evident in developing countries: there are occasionally some proposals to employ international architectural consulting services with innovative/ new approaches to design or plan for large cities with great local backgrounds. In these circumstances, the adaptability of international planning/design paradigms to local context is highlighted as a point of concern. In this research, firstly, ‘contextualism’ is reviewed as a theory underlying urban development. Secondly, three recent international urban development paradigms: New Urbanism, Urban Villages and Urban Renaissance and the adaptability of their proposed solutions to urban context will be analyzed. An analytical method for comparative research is used to describe the main ideas of research. In each section, with an overview of the most important related literature, a multi-step process and logical reasoning, the strategies of each paradigm are compared within a model (multiple dimensions of urban design). To compare the adaptability of strategies to the context, ‘contextualism’ conceptual framework has been utilized. It is concluded that each paradigm has more emphasis on a specific dimension of contextualism which traces back to specific economic, political, cultural circumstances from which that paradigm has been originated. Thus, when applying an international planning/design paradigm to a new environment, it will bring about practical changes only if it is calibrated to the local area’s context initially.