Beyond the Front Porch: Regionalist Ideals in the New Urbanist Movement

Abstract

The historical lineage of New Urbanism is often narrowly limited to the traditional town-planning techniques of John Nolen and Raymond Unwin. This paper focuses on the historical basis of the regional, polycentric city concepts that are an essential part of the New Urbanist manifesto. I focus primarily on the regionalism of Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford, Clarence Stein, and Benton MacKaye, and the principles laid out in the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) in the 1920s. I begin with a brief overview of the main principles of regionalism, culminating in the ideas of the RPAA, and then analyze how these ideas either connect or conflict with New Urbanism and its particular brand of the regionalist paradigm. An essential question for New Urbanists is how their particular version of regionalism stands up against earlier versions, and whether theirs will have a better chance of being implemented.

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