Peter Calthorpe (well, quoted by Andres) once distilled New Urbanism into two words: diverse and compact. John Massengale has a different phrase: walkable neighborhoods.

The short answer is that New Urbanism is about the making of walkable neighborhoods.

The short answer implies 3 things, all necessary for a walkable neighborhood:

1) There are places to walk to. That means the neighborhood has mixed uses, with stores and offices as well as houses and apartments.

Leon Krier’s definition of good urbanism is that you can buy a good cup of coffee within 5 minutes of walking out your front door.

2) That the neighborhood is, to use a horribly overused word, “sustainable.” That also has a few implications. The first is that you can fulfill most of your daily needs without getting in a car. If the town or village is isolated, there should be a train station or streetcar: in America, only the poor and the real urbanite will use buses on a regular basis. All of this requires a mix of incomes, so that there is a mix of society and workers.

If everyone has to drive to work everyday, the neighborhood is not sustainable in the long run…

3) People want to walk. That requires safe, beautiful streets. Pedestrians need sidewalks and protection from speeding cars, AND interesting, pleasant things to look at. Just proximity is not enough…

Neighborhoods can be hamlets or villages in the countryside, or part of a collection of neighborhoods in larger towns and cities.