As the popularity of traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs) increases, curiosity about what makes them popular increases as well. Stated simply, what makes traditional neighborhoods different from their conventional suburban competitors is an evident "sense of community." Traditional neighborhoods are deliberately designed around an attractive public realm as the principal neighborhood amenity. This principal amenity provides the connections for local citizens to get to know one another, as well as a dignified address for all the homes and buildings found on TNDhomes.com.

TNDhomes.com is also a planning tool for private and public sectors of the development community to better understand how homes can be arranged within an attractive public realm to create the sense of community many home buyers are looking for today. It is a contemporary tool for a not-so-new approach to community-building.

Before

Pedestrians on a Miami neighborhood sidewalk. Photo by Richard McLaughlin.

World War II, neighborhoods, towns and cities throughout the country were built to comfortably accommodate community interaction among citizens. People relied on each other for the majority of their entertainment and information needs. Neighbors got to know one another and, therefore, were able to share in their collective security and prosperity. They shared errands and responsibilities; sent their children walking to school together; and told stories in coffee shops, on park benches, on front porches and in the parlors of private homes.

Today,

Home theater in suburban home. Photo courtesy of Builder Magazine.

home theaters and Internet communication have become a central feature of family life. True, their capacity to improve our quality of life is impressive. They are remarkable achievements and their effects should not be underestimated. However, this change of focus, from human interaction to electronic sources of entertainment and information, with its attendant internal orientation of family life, raises some challenges for community-building.

What

Miami Beach café. Photo by Richard McLaughlin.

happened to our sense of community? Has our quality of life become measurable only by consumer products and personal indulgence? Certainly modem technology is only one factor distracting attention away from traditional community values. But is it possible to build communities that evolve with improving technology and a human touch? Indeed it is. To build for both technology and people, we must first re-define community and recognize its value in today's daily activities. Community is typically defined as a group of people who share specific interests and have the means to discuss them. A community embodies social, economic and political relationships among people, as well as physical conditions of their environment. A community with a healthy sense about itself balances those relationships, and its physical environment shapes and enhances that balance.

For example, a church congregation, sailing club members, parents of children attending the same school, and a company's office workers are distinct communities, yet individuals may live in different neighborhoods. The places where community members meet, formally or informally, are often scattered throughout the region. In today's society, virtual communities are formed through computer networking, and the shared physical environment may consist of only computer hardware, phone lines and data bytes. Such virtual communities expand our understanding of the rest of the world, but often have little positive impact on the quality of life where we live.

On the other hand, those who inhabit a neighborhood are a distinct community of place. Neighbors share a common interest in their neighborhood, as well as their own well-being. When neighbors communicate effectively with one another about these interests, they form the healthy relationships of a neighborhood community.

The

Celebration: Anchoring Cornerstones Place The Celebration Master Plan includes 8,000 homes, three square blocks of downtown mixed-use buildings, a one-million-square-foot office park and an 18-hole golf course, in a development pattern that takes its cue from the past and adds the best practices of today. Education The Celebration School will educate students from kindergarten through grade 12. Facilities include a gym, media center and ball fields, giving students access to the latest technology and a "neighborhood" classroom environment with a team of teachers. Health A 60-acre health campus will include outpatient surgery, diagnostic imaging and radiology, sports medicine, primary care services, a dental clinic, specialty physicians and a fitness center. Technology Every home and apartment, as well as businesses, the school and health campus, will be linked by a fiber-optic network to carry telephone service, television programming and data. Community Celebration offers many civic-building projects, because, according to Michael Eisner, chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company, "it is the human element that will make the community great." Its civic infrastructure includes opportunities for Boy Scouts, Rotary Club and Welcome Wagon participation. Sources: Michael D. Eisner, chairman and CEO, The Walt Disney Company; "Celebration: American Town Taking Shape in Central Florida," The Celebration Company.

neotraditional town of Celebration, Fla., is a good example of a community of place. The entire Celebration concept calls into question our conventional view of the American Dream because it demonstrates how living "someplace" can be just as appealing as living in open space, detached from every other place. The town's five "cornerstones" (see sidebar at right) expressed in its marketing program demonstrate that one's quality of life can be measured through both public and private experiences. Disney's vision teaches us that community development is not only about buildings or housing, but about the integration of all aspects of daily living at a human scale.

The American Dream is changing
After World War II, the American Dream became more defined around privacy and consumer products than it did a sense of community. The stand-alone suburban house, with all the latest appliances, became a standard of living to which almost everyone aspired. Over the years, federal highway building, guaranteed mortgage programs and simplified zoning policies came to support this dream. All scales of land development and mass-produced housing products followed right along. Production-built housing emphasized increasingly marketable characteristics of the house as a machine for living, with the latest gadgets and efficient construction technology. It also emphasized the house itself as the fulfillment of a dream-an end unto itself. The housing industry quickly came to neglect home building as a means for community building.

As time went on, the ever-expanding suburban landscape lost much of its charm. To a growing number of people, the suburbs are lacking many desirable amenities of mature city neighborhoods. Housing subdivisions, shopping centers and office parks are more fragmented and disconnected. More activities of daily life are located beyond walking distance from home. Streets and public transit, the circulation system for community living, have lost their convenience and dignity for pedestrians and bicyclists. The public realm, those community places, porches and parlors where neighbors casually got to know one another, have given way to personal transit and structured activities.

On

Neighbors and visitors gather on a green in Kentlands, Maryland. Photo by Jason Miller.

a grander social, political and economic scale, the excessive costs to build the American Dream are becoming more apparent as well. It has visibly burdened individual prosperity and community resources in ways that no one could have predicted. Families are spending more hours working and commuting to support their suburban dream. As taxes increase or are shifted to maintain extensive infrastructure systems, we also see tax resources compromised for schools, libraries, civic buildings, public spaces and the up-front planning necessary for sustainable urban development. Locally and regionally, governments are caught between a conventional development pattern and the ability to afford its long-term maintenance.

As

Residences surround Heritage Square in Liberty on the Lake, Minnesota. Anchored by a large gazebo, Heritage Square hosts concerts and other outdoor events during the summer months. Photo by Jason Miller.

a result, the American Dream, as it was once defined, is transforming. Truly urban models being built today offer compact, small-town neighborhoods. They include within walking distance a variety of buildings and open spaces for many daily activities. They provide places for living, working, shopping and recreation. They offer a range of housing types, from small apartments to larger-lot, single-family homes. They offer a variety of price points and household amenities. But most importantly, these new neighborhoods are designed with respect for both individual privacy and a sense of community. Throughout the country, healthy traditional neighborhoods are being built that demonstrate a development pattern embracing technological achievements without compromising an inherent sense of community. Within each home site, a deliberate sequence between public realm and private rooms provides a range of community and private experiences.

So, if vibrant neighborhoods and a sense of community are truly marketable commodities, how do we go about building them well? How do we build new neighborhoods and mend orphaned ones in mature cities?

First, we have to understand a public/private gradient within the larger neighborhood unit. A complete neighborhood has a distinct center and edge. Between them there is a gradient of land use. Home lots are larger at the edge and smaller toward the center. Larger homes dominate the neighborhood edge, while closely spaced and attached home types are prevalent in the neighborhood general zone. Apartments, shops and workplaces dominate the neighborhood's center. For home buyers, the range of lot sizes and building types offers multiple choices, depending on their desire for more public or more private urban living, unit price point and size. Over time, it is possible for a homebuyer to move up to larger homes as the family grows, or into smaller housing as an empty nester, without leaving the neighborhood community.

Depending on location, open space dedicated to public or private use in a complete neighborhood also varies in size and use. More open space is dedicated to private lots at the neighborhood edge, and more open space is dedicated to community activity at its center.

Second, we have to understand the public/private gradient on an individual lot. From the front yard to the owner's bedroom, a deliberate sequence can be identified from public, to semi-public, to semi-private, to private. The front porch, entryway, living room, family room, backyard, dining room, kitchen and bathrooms all support varying levels of communal or private activity.

Examining

Plan JWA-5801-B addresses the street with a raised foundation, a deep porch and front windows that give the appearance of vigilance. Photo courtesy of James Wentling/Architects.

the success of today's production-built housing, it is clear that the building industry has succeeded in delivering houses quickly and affordably, whether for infill or greenfield development. However, an understanding of how to build private residences that address an attractive public realm and a sense of community still is not apparent. More than anything else, the building and development community must learn to craft and sell an attractive public realm as a principal neighborhood amenity for home buyers and neighborhood businesses.

The lesson is not that cumbersome. There are mature precedents in well-maintained traditional neighborhoods. But even in new construction, not a lot has to change. For example, by rearranging fundamental components of garage, kitchen, living and bedrooms, conventional market designs, with all the contemporary finishes and household amenities, could actually improve backyard privacy and front yard curb appeal. Placing public spaces of the house forward, and private spaces to the rear and above, the space between community and personal territory becomes legible and comfortable.

In traditional neighborhood developments, the privacy gradient of the household reads something like this:

• Sidewalks become the public circulation space of the neighborhood.
• Porches and front yards provide semi-public spaces to greet neighbors.
• Living and dining rooms, as well as backyards, provide semi-private spaces for more focused conversations and activities.
• Bedrooms and bathrooms are visibly separated from view of the street and serve as private sanctuaries for the family.

In

These residences in Fairview Village, Ore., face a community "pocket park" that offers benches, a replica drinking fountain and plenty of green grass where kids can play. Photo by Jason Miller.

this arrangement, a sense of community, privacy and safety becomes real, understandable and valuable. When garages project into front yards as they do in typical suburban environments, they not only clutter a pedestrian-scaled streetscape, they also limit a view of street activity and interrupt the privacy gradient. However, front windows that allow neighbors to watch over activity on their public streets and open spaces deter delinquent behavior and initiate an immediate policing response when required. "Eyes on the street" in urban communities is a precious safety commodity. Even when there is no one home, windows give the impression that somebody could be watching.

In

Setting up chairs for a lecture on the Green in Newpoint, South Carolina. Photo by Jason Miller.

conclusion, the challenge to which TNDhomes.com responds is another set of choices in living arrangements. These new choices address the multiplicity of human experience over any one day, as well as over a lifetime. With more than 95 percent of Americans living in production-built housing, development partners throughout the country have an exceptional opportunity to dramatically enhance the American Dream through thoughtful neighborhood design. There is a new set of customers desperately searching for those kinds of choices. They are seeking a sense of community and privacy.

TNDhomes.com provides a practical means to deliver both.

Richard McLaughlin is an architect and town planner based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is a former principal of Town Planning Collaborative of Minneapolis, and has led charrettes and community design workshops around the country. Rich's passion has been to communicate the physical, social, economic and political benefits of traditional urban development patterns and educate the public about the techniques by which they may be achieved through new construction. He is known nationally for his design and implementation of new neighborhoods at the metropolitan edge, as well as redevelopment and infill projects for mature urban neighborhoods, corridors and districts.