ABSTRACT
Master planning, defined as the comprehensive planning and design of a new residential area, has been linked with sustainability goals most significantly in the emergence of New Urbanism over the last two decades as a planning strategy to create new compact, ‘pedestrian friendly’, sustainable neighbourhoods (cf. Duany and Seaside Institute, 2008; Grant, 2006; Helbrecht and Dirksmeier, 2012). New Urbanism has been quickly adopted by private development firms as a way to provide and market sustainable residential environments, largely in the North American context (Grant, 2006; Moore, 2010). The Congress for New Urbanism, an American organization that promotes New Urbanism as a planning approach, 1 was one of the partners involved in creating the LEED sustainable planning and design rating system for neighbourhood development (LEED ND 2 ) (Mapes and Wolch, 2011). Support among urban practitioners for New Urbanist planning has largely been influenced through ‘best practice’ policy mobility between urban municipalities (Moore, 2013). While New Urbanism is largely applied to the planning of new residential neighbourhoods, its general tenets – such as built form intensification, social and residential tenure mix, blended residential and commercial spatial uses and sustainable forms of mobility – have also influenced the production of small and individual housing developments. An ubiquitous planning and aesthetic approach has emerged through policy and planning attention to New Urbanism that is easily modelled and localized in various urban areas, leading to a similarity in the land use form and design of newly built sustainable urban communities.
