Spatial Prescriptions and Social Realities: New Urbanism and the Production of Northwest Landing

Abstract

In this paper I analyze the popularity and proliferation of New Urbanism within the context of a post-industrial urban political economy. By looking at the production of Northwest Landing, a New Urban development, I consider the post-industrial company town as one way to understand how political and economic processes are structured into the landscape. Because it focuses solely on spatial arrangements, and therefore on those who design particular configurations of space, New Urbanism effectively ignores the broader social and economic processes that both constrain and enable particular agents. I suggest that by attending to the broad appeal of New Urbanism without losing sight of the specific context within which projects such as Northwest Landing are created, our focus shifts from simply imagining what a better way of life might look like to critically analyzing the processes that prevent or facilitate the attainment of New Urbanism's normative ideals.