Each development, as they envision it, should include a mix of single- family homes, apartments and townhouses, a town center, mixed-use commercial facilities and employment centers. Everything ought to be no more than a quarter-mile from a transit stop.
The "back to the future" feel is to be achieved through straight-line road grids, narrow streets, shorter lot setbacks, and garages behind houses in alleys instead of in front. "Granny" flats over the garages are actually encouraged.
To make these ideas work, automobiles have to give up some of their dominance. That means transit-oriented development is critical.
The New Urbanism may be new elsewhere, but in the Philadelphia citistate it's old hat.
This region has been fusing transit-oriented development with suburbanization for well over a century now. The experiment began with America's pioneering commuter rail lines, built by the Pennsylvania Railroad to Chestnut Hill and the Main Line after the Civil War.
The original goal may have simply been to ease rich executives' escape from the city, but the result today is a rich legacy of accessible, pleasantly scaled communities where residents can still actually run many errands by walking.
The roster of such spots includes Chestnut Hill, Bala Cynwyd, University City, Jenkintown, Villanova and Plater-Zyberk's hometown, Paoli.
Unfortunately, the Philadelphia region's post-World War II settlements, mimicking the pattern of suburbia elsewhere, tended to ignore the rail lines.
The automobile, wrapping commuters in metal-boxed anonymity, provided a far less sociable way to commute.
The intriguing question now is: Would pedestrian-oriented development work today in the Philadelphia region?
