New urbanism

New urbanism

Introduction

Following the rise of the paradigm of New Urbanism, architecture and planning have essentially included the theme of society. Security aspects obviously have an influence on how built environment is changed and developed. Conversely, the way in which built environment is changed and developed influences the security of infrastructures, and of society as a whole, both in manifest and in latent ways. This interrelationship falls under what the school of New Urbanism has termed the sociospatial perspective – which emphasizes that urban space and society interact.

Related aspects

Important trains of thought of practical relevance for the consideration of “soft” security in urban planning include the following:

• Ecological perspective;
• Environmental psychology;
• Resilience;
• Risk research on perception of the criticality of infrastructure;
• Societal resilience.

Architecture, planning and society

Following the rise of the paradigm of New Urbanism, architecture and planning have essentially included the theme of society. New Urbanism sets out to overcome the zoning of certain functional areas, typical of the industrial age, that separate residential from economy and other use. Nowadays, given the predominantly information-based and would-be environmentally clean economy, planning should aim at a mix of residential and economy-related functions and eliminate regional sprawl.

Criticism

However, this conceptual integration of society into urbanity does not always well reflect the new levels of social density that will be reached and that may change urban cultures, including the social and cognitive foundations for the perception of (in)security and fear by the citizens. Another criticism is that while New Urbanism is committed to a reconciliation of physical infrastructure and community building, it follows a sort of physical determinism in that it assumes that informed, progressive architectural design per se meliorates human behavior, reduces insecurity as well as citizens’ feeling thereof and increases societal resilience.

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