Critiques, replicas and proposals for the New Urbanism Vision


Alaide Retana, Cesar Pena, Luz Maria Ortega


Rezumat/Abstract. The new urbanism (NU) is a vision of planning and urban design emerged in 1993, which finds its basis in the design of traditional communities. This trend has had various criticisms and replicas, which were reviewed in re-lation to urban sprawl, transportation, re-densifying, mix of uses of land, design, gentrification, pedestrianization and safety, which were analyzed in the neighborhood of Santa Barbara in Toluca, Mexico. This area was chosen for being traditional and forming part of the historical center of the city, which even though it was not designed under the guidelines of the NU, it has the quality of traditional, from which the NU would theoreti-cally has taken its essence. The objective of this analysis is to establish whether the NU has the essence of a traditional Mexican neighborhood, as well as to check if the criticisms of the NU are informed when applied to a space belonging to a Mexican historic center that has been abandoned by problems of insecurity and degradation. The general conclusion is that the traditional neighborhoods have provided design elements to the NU, which will refute some of the criticisms, however, proposals for NU in neighborhoods of historic centers have to be based on the community, the architecture and existing urbanism, since these elements are those that give the identity.

Cuvinte cheie/Key words: traditional neighborhood, consolidated neighborhoods, community de-velopment, urban design, New Urbanism

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