1,000,000 people "neighborhood"?

[jeafl]

Does anyone know what the largest new urbanist community ever built is in terms of area and population is?

My understanding is that new urban communities are small- nothing bigger than what I would consider to be a neighborhood- no more than a hundred acres or so and no more than 2-3,000 people.

My understanding is also that business in a new urban community is mainly (if not exclusively?) small-scale retail shopping and white collar professional offices and services. A place like Seaside, Florida is little more than a tourist attraction. I don’t see how a new urbanist neighborhood could provide enough jobs to support the population without having that neighborhood connected to a large city- which would essentially make the new urbanist neighborhood more-or-less a suburb of the city.

But what about bigger communities? Could you put new urbanist neighborhoods together so they could be a full-fledged city? Could an entire city be designed using new urbanism design principles? Could you have a city with say a million people with a mix of retail, professional and industrial\manufacturing activities along with museums, theaters, libraries and other cultural accoutrements that come in a large city?

[docwatson]

Would you mean a city built from the ground up, or an existing city? In many existing cities the core would adhere to new urban principles, as would any pre-World War II suburbs. Unfortunately, these were often chopped up by highway construction, torn down by urban renewal, etc. Cities/regions like Denver and Portland (to name two examples) are essentially building a network of rails and surrounding the stations with transit-oriented (re)development and TOD planning areas, so that the city essentially develops a network of interconnected neighborhoods that would meet New Urban principles ... because the new urban pattern requires a reduction in land dedicated to autos, I believe to scale it up requires a regional transit network - rail, bus rapid transit, bus, bicycles, etc.

As for communities, the largest one I know is Stapleton redevelopment, in Denver, will house I believe 30,000 people plus many jobs and commerce. I am not sure how well retail commerce adheres to New Urban principles ... i.e. does it use urban big box typologies with structured parking? Stapleton is well on the way to buildout and so is a great example.

Internationally, I'm sure one can find much larger examples.

[jeafl]

Would you mean a city built from the ground up, or an existing city? In many existing cities the core would adhere to new urban principles, as would any pre-World War II suburbs. Unfortunately, these were often chopped up by highway construction, torn down by urban renewal, etc.

I’m thinking of a new city built from the ground up precisely because of the problems you describe. I doubt that America has a single city built before World War II that hasn’t been affected by urban sprawl.

I recently read a book (I cannot remember the title at the moment) that claimed that Manhattan is one of the best urban environments in existence in terms of the environment- dwellings are small so they don’t use much energy or raw materials to build. Privately owned cars are practically non-existent so the people that live in Manhattan have one of the lowest per-capita gasoline consumptions in the country. And Manhattan is serviced by a very efficient and effective public mass-tansit system.

But I don’t think Manhattan would really qualify as a new urbanist community. It has one of the largest (if not the largest) concentrations of wealth in the U.S. so it really has no mixed-income residences. Most people there live in high-rise apartment buildings so you don’t have the mix of housing types you are supposed to find in a new urbanist community. And if you don’t count the maids and cooks and waitresses that work in Manhattan the place is likely a racial and a socio-economic monolith.

because the new urban pattern requires a reduction in land dedicated to autos, I believe to scale it up requires a regional transit network - rail, bus rapid transit, bus, bicycles, etc.

These are exact terms I am thinking in. Let people live in distinct neighborhoods where they can satisfy their daily shopping needs by walking to a corner store- or a centralized business district. But give them good quality mass-transit so they can get to a diversity of jobs and a wider range of commercial and cultural activities without being dependent on a private car.

When I was in college in Emory, Atlanta had both a bus and a light rail mass-transit system. The rail lines ran north-south and east-west. The buses ran from a station on one rail line to a station on the other rail line. You could go back and forth from bus to rail and essentially travel in a circle. But at the same time walking distance shopping in the area where I lived was rather limited. I had a drug store in one direction and a grocery store in the opposite direction and then later another grocery store opened. It was better than anything I could ever have here, but it still wasn’t great- and you took your life in your own hands anytime you had to cross the street.

I am not sure how well retail commerce adheres to New Urban principles ... i.e. does it use urban big box typologies with structured parking?

I saw on the net a couple of days ago that Palo Alto, California limits all grocery stores to 20,000 square feet. I realize that there has to be a balance between population and retail store size in order for the population to walk while insuring that the store has enough customers for its size to be profitable. But I have researched and researched this issue and I cannot find any concrete data.

We have 2 salvage stores in town now. One is located in what must have been a grocery store 40-50 years ago, and it is located on a commercial street that has single-family houses backing up to it on both sides. The store’s parking lot may hold 50 cars. The store reminds me of the grocery stores I vaguely remember from my earliest childhood. But you could probably put at least 20 of these stores in a Walmart.

The other salvage store is located in an old Kmart that was used back in the late 1970s. You could put at least 3 of it in a modern Kmart.