Why New Urbanism

At Gran Pacifica we are implementing the concepts of New Urbanism because this new architectural urban design trend generates community creation. The word community is easy to say and promise, but it is something intangible very difficult to achieve for developers. The concepts of New Urbanism serve us as a guideline to achieve our goal of building an upscale beach community in Nicaragua’s Pacific Coast.

We would like to share with you the key concepts of new urbanism and why it is creates value for residents that invest inside these types of urban design. Gran Pacifica hopes you find the information below useful to understand why we are doing certain things inside our development.

New Urbanism = Community Creation Design

New Urbanism Key Concepts

Dissatisfaction with the degraded quality of life offered by disconnected pods of uniform beige boxes led to the movement known as neo-traditional development, or new urbanism. The new urbanism focuses on the neighborhood rather than the individual house, with consideration for how people will live and interact among each other and the build and a natural environment. An emphasis on convenience for pedestrians encourages mixing uses.

This type of urban design is perfect for tourism communities near the beach or natural attractions such as lakes and forests. Seaside, Florida, is often cited as the first New Urbanism community at the beach.

This photograph provides a panoramic view of Seaside, a planned resort community in Florida on the coast of the Gulf o exico. Architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk designed Seaside to be a cozy community reminiscent of small-town America.

Shops, services, and amenities are integrated into the community near residences. Streets are connected, typically in a traditional grid pattern, so that vehicles and pedestrians have multiple choices rather than being channeled onto collector roads. Higher densities are encouraged for efficiency and to allow for preservation of meaningful open space such as parks, plazas, golf courses, or beach club houses. Goals of new urbanism include improve aesthetics, convenience, social integration, and a more sustainable way of developing communities via sewage treatment plants for instance.

Origin of New Urbanism

The New Urbanism is a reaction to sprawl. A growing movement of architects, planners, and developers, the New Urbanism is based on principles of planning and architecture that work together to create human-scale, walkable communities.  The New Urbanism includes traditional architects and those with modernist sensibilities. All, however, believe in the power and ability of traditional neighborhoods to restore functional, sustainable communities. The trend had its roots in the work of maverick architects and planners in the 1970’s and 1980’s who coalesced into a unified group in the 1990s. From modest beginnings, the trend is beginning to have a substantial impact. More than 600 new towns, villages, and neighborhoods are planned or under construction in the US, using principles of the New Urbanism. Additionally, hundreds of small-scale new urban infill projects are restoring the urban fabric of cities and towns by reestablishing walkable streets and blocks.

Definition of New Urbanism

The New Urbanism trend goes by other names, including neotraditional design, transit-oriented development, and traditional neighborhood development. Borrowing from urban design concepts throughout history, the New Urbanism does not merely replicate old communities. New houses within neighborhoods, for example, must provide modern living spaces and amenities that consumers demand.  Stores and businesses must have sufficient parking, modern floor plans, and connections to automobile and pedestrian traffic, and/or transit systems.  While the basis for this design is in historical neighborhoods, differences do exist to account for the advances in comfort technology and housing, as well as the changes in how people get around.

One difference between the old and the New Urbanism is the street grid. Historic cities and towns in the US employ a grid that is relentlessly regular. New Urbanists generally use a "modified" grid, with "T" intersections and street deflections to calm traffic and increase visual interest.

Nostalgia Element

The blending of old and new is the basis for the term “neotraditional,” a word that is used in this sense to reflect a throw-back to the nostalgia of the past, while also bringing in modern elements to bring the traditional into the future. The very fact that New Urbanists must meet the demands of the marketplace keeps them grounded in reality. Successful New Urbanism performs a difficult balancing act by maintaining the integrity of a walkable, human-scale neighborhood while offering modern residential and commercial “product” to compete with conventional neighborhood development.

Traditional Architecture

The new urbanism borrows much from traditional planning and traditional architecture.  For example, ECI Development has combined in Gran Pacifica Nicaragua the Nicaraguan Spanish Colonial Architecture of the Colonial Cities of Leon and Granada with modern amenities (golf courses, fiber optic, and underground electricity) and new urbanism concepts such as narrow pedestrian friendly streets with sidewalks. Buildings use traditional materials and are designed to emulate and blend with the regional vernacular. For instance in Belize, ECI plans to implement British Victorian Houses with Caribbean flavor.

In new urbanism, the built environment is scaled for people rather than stepped up for vehicles driving through at highway speeds. Neighborhoods take cues from the best 1930s neighborhoods, where houses and apartment buildings face the street, wide, shaded sidewalks provide a pleasant pedestrian environment, and the messy necessities-parking, garbage, and utilities are hidden behind the houses in alleys.

The New Urbanism Trend in Unite tates

In many cases in the United States, new urbanism is influencing new developments. Pure new urbanist communities make up a small but growing percentage of all new development, increasing numbers of communities show the influence of the new urbanism by making narrower streets, interconnected designs, smaller lots, and denser development. Land uses are more mixed with expensive large homes close to smaller models but all of them within the same quality and architectural style. Additionally, nearly every large development in the USA is trying to incorporate some kind of town center into its urban design.