PUBLIC SQUARE Center for The New Urbanism

CNU's mission is to champion walkable urbanism. We provide resources, education, and technical assistance to create socially just, economically robust, environmentally resilient, and people centered places. 

We leverage New Urbanism's unique integration of design and social principle to advance three key goals: to diversify neighborhoods, to design for climate change, and to legalize walkable places. We build places people love.

PUBLIC SQUARE

A CNU Journal

Drawings by Dhiru Thadani

GOT A MINUTE

Urban exodus and new urban reunion

ROBERT STEUTEVILLE    OCT. 17, 2023

In the early 1980s, a young architect, Dhiru Thadani, saw a lecture by another young architect, Andres Duany, who was designing a new town called Seaside with his wife and partner, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Duany explained how the elements of cities decanted, one at a time, to the suburbs in the form of sprawl. The exodus began with housing, then shopping, then schools and civic buildings, and, finally, office parks. 

Thadani went home and did what he usually does, draw the idea. He produced two drawings, circa 1981-1982. The one on the left shows the urban exodus decade by decade. On the right, the elements are brought back together in the town plan of Seaside, on the Florida Panhandle. Today, Seaside is a high-end resort, yet it includes residential, shopping, civic, and office uses in one walkable package. The drawings were completed more than 40 years ago and still tell a powerful story.

Robert Steuteville, F-CNU, is editor of Public Square: A CNU Journal and senior communications adviser for the Congress for the New Urbanism.