Urban Villages and New Urbanism

New Urbanism is an important planning movement this century. It is an international movement to reform the design of the built environment to create new “urban villages” that will improve quality of life and standard of living by creating better places to live.

New Urbanism is the revival of the art of place-making, and is essentially a re-ordering of the built environment into the form of complete cities, towns, villages, and neighborhoods - the way communities have been built for centuries around the world.

New Urbanism involves fixing and infilling cities, as well as the creation of compact new towns and villages. 

Urban Villages are compact, walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods and towns that are a pleasure to live in. 

Urban villages are places where everything you need is within walking distance (shops, restaurants, movies, services), including nice public squares to relax in and meet people.

These compact villages are a drastic contrast to our sprawling suburbs where everything is spread out, separated by uses, and connected only by roads and highways.

The principles of New Urbanism can be applied increasingly to projects at the full range of scales from a single building to an entire community.

The main features of an urban village are:

• Higher density uses so that everything within the 'village' is within walking and cycling distance;
• Mixed land use with commercial offices and shops on main spines, surrounded by residential development
• Mix of public and private housing with a range of types, sizes and prices in closer proximity
• Diversity of people from various ages, classes, cultures and race
• Considerable landscaping eg gardens on buildings and balconies and public spaces with strong design features and recreational opportunities (water, street furniture, sculptures, playgrounds)
• Extensive provision for children in good view of dwellings
• Community facilities such as libraries, child care, aged centres, social centres and in some cases small urban farms
• Smart transport - pedestrian and bicycle links knitting the development together; good rail links to the wider city; Underground car parks with access from rear areas; Traffic calming on peripheral roads
• A large degree of self-sufficiency and sustainability for the community with minimal environmental impact of development and its operation by using eco-friendly technologies, and energy efficiency
• Connectivity and enhanced quality of life

Most urban villages are built on reasonably large vacant areas of land, and usually well within the existing boundaries of a city.

There is also a trend now to try to convert pre-existing urban development into 'urban villages' or 'transit villages' as they are sometimes referred to in the US. This approach seeks to knit together the urban fabric into a coherent whole where the public spaces become people-orientated and circulation on foot, bicycle and public transport is given priority.

Follow these links to some Urban Villages websites

Urban Villages (opens in a new browser window)

New Urbanism (opens in new browser window)

The Kelvin Grove Urban Village is the first inner-city development of its kind in Australia, where a government and university have come together to plan and build a new integrated community. It brings together education, residential, health, retail, recreational and business opportunities into a new precinct.

The Queensland Government, through its Department of Housing, and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) are working in partnership to revitalise the 16 hectares of land at Kelvin Grove, just two kilometres from Brisbane’s Central Business District.

Follow this link for more information on Kelvin Grove Urban Village (opens in a new browser window)