ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses mainly on urbanism in America in the early years of the 21st century and examines aspects of New Urbanism in detail, specifically with regard to the movement's internal dialectic between its radical town planning principles and its antithetical tendency to be commodified by the marketplace into a conservative aesthetic style. These principles focus on the concept and design of the neighborhood as an essential building block for towns and cities, but the role of ‘neighborhood unit theory’ has been hotly debated for the last 80 years since American sociologist Clarence Perry first introduced it into modern urban discourse. Accordingly, this chapter also provides a critical analysis of the arguments surrounding neighborhood theory and its continued relevance to contemporary urban designers and planners in Britain and America.
The chapter also includes a brief discussion of ‘Everyday Urbanism’ – a celebration by some American critics of low-key, small-scale acts of urban placemaking by ethnic minority groups in their adopted American cities. Everyday Urbanism comprises things or events such as temporary markets that spring up at street intersections, ad hoc festivals that take over a deserted parking lot or urban murals – usually unauthorized – that enliven otherwise ugly surroundings. This American phenomenon is a counter-culture version of the street markets still fairly common in British towns and cities, and quite normal in mainland Europe (see Figure 6.1), but the dearth of public life in many American cities transforms these modest appropriations of urban space into cultural spectacles that garner much critical attention.
Street market, Bucine, Tuscany. Weekly markets are still a regular feature of urban life in Europe. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780080492605/0183eeec-7e0c-4d1c-b1ba-a8a44d49126c/content/fig6_1_C.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>