Peter Simex | DM Magazine

Rendering of Dallas Midtown, the planned new development on the site of the Valley View Mall
Rendering of Dallas Midtown, the planned new development on the site of the Valley View Mall

The Congress for the New Urbanism is holding its 26th annual conference in Dallas this week, a four-day festivity for city wonks that includes compelling conversations ranging from “The Paradox of Place-Based Coding: Expanding the Discussion of Regulatory Reform” to “The Art of Subdivision.” Needless to say, I wish I could disappear into the bowels of conceptual urbanity over the next half-week, but we’re on deadline for the June edition and I have too many words left to type.

Still, I wanted to use the excuse of the conference to briefly address this idea of “New Urbanism.”

If you have been paying attention to conversations about Dallas and its development over the past decade or so, you’ve likely come across the term before. Generally speaking, it is used to describe the kinds of developments or city building projects that promote all of those things we’ve come to associate almost unquestionably with good city-building practices: walkability, sustainability, mixed-use, density, transit-oriented, etc. Depending on whether you are talking to a developer’s marketing team or a bearded, bike-riding urbanite, New Urbanism might be summed up as “Live, Work, Play” or “human-scaled city building.” Read more