Twenty-seven principles in three scales (the region; the neighbourhood, district and corridor; the block, street and building) for compact, walkable, mixed-use towns.
The Congress for the New Urbanism was founded in 1993 by architects including Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Peter Calthorpe and Daniel Solomon, and ratified its Charter in 1996. It opposes the sprawl of single-use zoning with neighbourhoods that are compact, pedestrian-friendly and mixed in use, with a clear centre and edge; streets designed for walking as well as driving; and civic buildings given prominent sites.
The Charter is deliberately general. Its designers usually translate it into the rule of the five-minute walk (a neighbourhood about a quarter of a mile from centre to edge) and into form-based codes of the Seaside kind.
The book, part by part
I The neighbourhood, the district and the corridor
Compact, walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods with a centre and an edge.
II The block, the street and the building
Streets as public space; civic buildings on important sites.