Suburbans Want More Urban

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Suburban cities are working with developers to create new town centers, many of them modeled after Celebration, Fla., developed by Walt Disney Co.

Urban planners say the best reason for creating a downtown is that it encourages commerce. "It's important because that's where retail's going. Shoppers want . . . an enjoyable social experience. They want to be in real places," says John Norquist, president and chief executive of Congress for the New Urbanism, a nonprofit group that encourages the building of such compact, pedestrian-friendly communities.

One of the challenges is the need to include affordable housing even though land costs are high. "Aside from diversity and all those wonderful things, no society works without some number of service workers," says David Smith, president of Recap Advisors, an affordable-housing consulting firm in Boston. "The closer they are to the jobs they do, the happier everybody is."

Another issue is that new downtowns seem contrived. Town-center designers are trying to combat that in part by hiring teams of architects so buildings aren’t all designed by one person and by selling lots separately rather than turning over large tracts to just one developer.

Source: Orlando Sentinel, Sandra Pedicini (02/12/07)