From Good Neighborhoods to Sustainable Cities: Social Science and the Social Agenda of the New Urbanism

Abstract

Despite of the growing influence of the new urbanism, social science has contributed relatively little to our understanding of the movement’s significance. Research has often focused on testing hypotheses derived directly from new urbanist claims, rather than posing questions grounded in sociological theory and empirical study of actual transformations of planning, design, and development practice. This article proposes an understanding of the sociology implicit in the new urbanism as it has organized the reform of professional practice in terms of two distinct ideals: community, with its rhetoric of solidarity based on common feeling, and urbanism, with echoes of an Arendtian conception of the public realm. Although new urbanists have not recognized important social and political implications of their project, their efforts to transform the way we build neighborhoods and cities suggest important lessons for a research agenda and a sociology of place more usefully connected to place-making practice.