NEOTRADITIONAL DEVELOPMENTS: THE ANATOMY OF A NEW URBAN FORM

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Built at a small scale and incorporating many features of certain old-city neighborhoods, such as narrow streets and small setbacks, neotraditional developments have been designed by architects and built by a small number of developers on suburban greenfield sites since the early 1980s. The distinctive neotraditional urban form represents the convergence of certain aspects of two planning traditions—urban aesthetics and social utopianism. In this paper I outline the two traditions and show how they have been selectively appropriated by neotraditional architects and planners. I suggest that the recent restructuring and fragmentation in the suburban housing market has led to the creation of niche markets, such as the market for neotraditionalism. Using Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus, I argue that the commercial success of neotraditional developments can be explained when recognition is given to the role of relatively affluent house buyers intent on creating a habitus and appropriating symbolic capital. Habitus is defined as the system of values, dispositions, and practices that constitute and are constituted by a societal group.