The Congress for the New Urbanism was founded in 1993 by Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Peter Calthorpe, Elizabeth Moule, Stefanos Polyzoides and Daniel Solomon, and adopted its Charter in 1996. The movement promoted compact, walkable, mixed-use neighbourhoods with traditional street networks, a range of housing and transit orientation, as a reaction against sprawl and single-use zoning. It drew on pre-war town design and the Ahwahnee Principles and produced influential demonstration towns such as Seaside, Florida. Its ideas fed into transit-oriented development, form-based codes and HOPE VI redevelopment.
New Urbanism became the leading late-twentieth-century alternative to suburban sprawl and reshaped American thinking on walkable, mixed-use design.
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