Traditional Neighborhood Design, Planned Unit Development, and New Urbanism

Cambridge Square, Ooltewah TN

We’ve all enjoyed trips to small towns and city centers to walk around, visit shops, discover restaurants, and enjoy the historic atmosphere. Why don’t we build that way anymore? New development is dominated by interstates, shopping centers, and tract housing developments. Instead of more of that, why don’t we just… create new small towns? Well, we’re working on that!

Let’s roll back time to the 1980’s, when some pioneering developers thought the same thing. “Let’s create a new urban environment,” they said. The broad concept of New Urbanism was born. But what does that look like for residential development? The idea was to replicate a small-town feel, where homes would be close to sidewalks and tree-lined streets. Neighbors could chat with each other from their porches. Garages would be around back and wouldn’t dominate the front of the house. Shops and restaurants would be within walking distance. Traditional Neighborhood Development, or TND for short, was born.

Ok great! But city planners are sticklers for zoning, and zoning … well it forbids this sort of foolishness. Zoning says that residential areas, commercial areas, and industrial areas must be separated, preferably by large roads and interstates. Bummer. There needs to be a way to insert these new small-town-feeling TNDs into the general zoning. City planners grappled with this, thinking, “But we worked so hard to come up with all this zoning in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s.” They thought for a while, had a smoke (because you could smoke indoors back then), and then had a brainwave. “Let’s just carve out some space and let what goes on in there be up to the developers!” they said. The Planned Unit Development, or PUD, was born. (I know a child whose family calls her Pud – short for Puddin’)

You may be asking “What’s the difference between a subdivision and a PUD?”. In short, a subdivision must adhere to the zoning ordinance already in effect in that area, whereas a PUD sets its own “zoning” inside its boundaries. For instance, the lot sizes in PUDs are often smaller than in neighboring subdivisions to create a tighter “fabric” and encourage neighborly interactions by having homes closer together. PUDs can also have a mix of homes, businesses, shops, restaurants, etc.

I have designed quite a few homes in various TNDs / PUDs and also served on their architectural review boards. It’s very rewarding to see my designs standing in those communities and hear stories of family life in those homes. I’m very thankful for the pioneering efforts of developers who embrace TND concepts and make a place for me to practice and families to enjoy.

Recently, my daughter Meg and I took a trip down to see one of these developments: Cambridge Square in Ooltewah, Tennessee. To learn more about our trip, you can follow this link to see the Facebook post about it: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CTttzzbsc/ . . . we had a great time and are excited to share our experience there.