A Blueprint for New Towns

The formula is simple: Traditionalism > Modernism.

This is a new town.

David Milner is Managing Director at Create Streets, a European design practice dedicated to developing better towns. He’s now a relatively prolific writer as well, often penning pieces that describe universal principles of design, why places are great, and how to make more of them.

In a recent X post, David underscored these values through photos of Pontoise, a new town outside of Paris:

“This is Pontoise, France. A blueprint for new towns. This is a new piece of town built around a train station. [It] used to be surface parking, but [is] now homes, businesses, and shops. Most residential parking is underground, and with its excellent location, not as many people choose to have vehicles.”

Relatively recently, this land was a parking lot.

In other words, out of nothing, Pontoise created something.

According to the International New Town Institute, Cergy-Pontoise is one of five New Towns of Paris that were built from the 1960s onwards—and it is assumed to be the most successful. With 399 homes across 4.2 acres, it pencils out to a remarkable 100 homes per acre. By comparison, most Southern cities in the US average around 4 homes per acre.

There are “plenty of businesses, too,” Milner adds.

With this density and ubiquity of retail services, Pontoise is precisely what urbanists love and seek to build more of.

Despite being designed at a neighborhood scale with buildings capped at five stories, Pontoise achieves a density comparable to Barcelona’s Eixample, which, at 100,000 people per square mile, is the densest area in the Western world.

But more than any data point can discern, it’s undeniably lovely. It’s lovely, and it’s new, which is so damn frustratingly rare. The reason Pointoise is lovely is that it follows the principles of traditionalism. In my view, this is the common denominator of great places.

THE TRADITIONALIST’S THEORY OF EVERYTHING

Traditionalism shows up in new towns in three ways: 1) land planning, 2) architecture, and 3) development strategies. We can see all three types present in Pontoise.

The architecture evokes traditional Paris, and the land planning makes it look like an idyllic French town. There is no mistaking where Pontoise is. This sense of place is an underappreciated criterion of great architecture.

And the way Pontoise was built out—incrementally, sans monolith—is the traditional form of townbuilding which is all but lost in the modern world. The result is that the new town has meaning because it has context. And it has context because it is built by and for a place. All of these are criteria for traditional design.

COMPARING IDEOLOGIES

The juxtaposition of traditional architecture as inferior (and modern as superior) is debated ad nauseam within the intellectual zeitgeist. It’s worth comparing the ideologies, which I have done here:

Commitment to tradition weaves a common thread through Pointoise. Its land planning and architecture are clearly rooted in history and place. While its development process obviously faced different pressures than Hausmannian Paris, its ownership is diverse. This is unheard of in comparable modern developments, which are increasingly owned by billion-dollar development companies, REITS, and life insurance companies.

There are many contrasts between modernism and traditionalism in this picture. The former is big, dumb, placeless, dehumanizing, machinelike, and soulless. The latter is smaller, incremental, smart, place-based, humanizing, individual-enhancing, and soul-satisfying.***

Traditional values of design are present in these new towns. Notably, they are present in old towns, too. But none are present in the typical development of modern suburban America. And that’s the problem.

IF MODERN DEVELOPMENT SUCKS, WHY DO WE KEEP DOING IT?

Modern development, despite its baggage and repeated failures, isn’t just surviving—it’s thriving. Why? Because it remains the dominant force shaping our built environment, even as dissatisfaction grows. So why do we keep building places no one loves, instead getting so much of what we loathe?

As a fundamental fight of our time, this topic is worthy of more than a list of bullets, but here are three key reasons that explain this failure:

1. DIFFICULTY of EXECUTION. Modern development has a high ROBD (Return on Brain Damage), meaning it is easier to squeeze out more profit with less pain. Modern development conforms with both modern zoning and modern entitlement processes, which encourage uniformity and conformity at every step. Traditionalism, on the other hand, has a low ROBD; it’s riskier, harder to get approved, and with fewer underwriting sources is more expensive to finance. In American land use, those proposing anything “different” or “ambitious” are regularly punished by neighbors, politicians, planners, journalists, and bankers, which brings us to #2.

2. PREDOMINANCE of INSTITUTIONAL FINANCE. The institutionalization of development finance has accelerated the destruction of localism. And localism only comes through traditionalism. In the past thirty years, development finance has shifted to Wall Street. Wall Street is good at squeezing every bit of waste out of a process to maximize profits. While that creates obvious shareholder value, the problem is that these skills are wholly incompatible with placemaking. To the distal investor, a house is just a data point, not a place to raise a family, let alone build a community.

   Moreover, traditional places are invariably built by local developers, while sprawl is built by regional or national ones (typically Wall Street-backed). Wall Street can borrow at 4-5%, whereas local developers must pay 7-12%. On a tilted playing field with rising interest rates, it’s hard to compete. The institutionalization of finance has been ruinous for traditional placemaking.

3. TOXIC HOUSING POLITICS. The politicization of land use encourages undesirable development because housing politics wastes volumes of time and money. And it takes time and money to build a beautiful development. Every dollar wasted on unproductive pre-construction engagement and/or years of political permission-seeking is a dollar not spent on architecture, civic monuments, or amenities.

   As the development’s purpose is diluted (or lost) to years (sometimes decades) of entitlement, it follows that placemaking can no longer be a primary purpose. The politicization of housing absolutely puts downward pressure on quality of place. They inversely correlate.

SOLUTION

How do we build more Pontoise? The solutions are simple, but they are not easy.