Academic Journal

Disparate Projects, Coherent Practices: Constructing New Urbanism through the Charter Awards

Bibliographic Details
Title: Disparate Projects, Coherent Practices: Constructing New Urbanism through the Charter Awards
Authors: Dan Trudeau
Source: Urban Planning, Vol 5, Iss 4 (2020)
Subject Terms: awards, charrette, congress for the new urbanism, urban design, worlding practices, City planning, HT165.5-169.9
Publisher Information: Cogitatio, 2020.
Publication Year: 2020
Collection: LCC:City planning
Description: The Congress for the New Urbanism’s (CNU) annual Charter Awards offers a rich set of documents with which to understand the discursive construction of the New Urbanism movement in the world. Every year, since 2001, developers and designers submit work representing their plans and projects to CNU for consideration of an award. In each case, a collection of urban design practitioners with expertise in New Urbanism comes together as jurors to evaluate the submissions. A handful of projects are recognized with an award and profiled in the Charter Awards booklet. This booklet offers a snapshot of what the movement’s awards program jurors in a given year see as its exemplary work and most innovative accomplishments. Using a framework for understanding the discursive labor that design award programs perform, I examine two decades worth of Charter Awards and analyze narratives and messages presented therein concerning how New Urbanism exists in the world. I advance three claims through this analysis. First, the Charter Awards as a text discursively constructs disparate projects and plans as part of a singular movement. Second, the Charter Awards narrate New Urbanism as a worldwide movement that transcends particularities of place, culture, and history. Finally, CNU uses the Charter Awards to effectively claim universal relevance to urban development despite the particularities of places and the divergence of development contexts.
Document Type: article
File Description: electronic resource
Language: English
ISSN: 2183-7635
Relation: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/urbanplanning/article/view/3366; https://doaj.org/toc/2183-7635
DOI: 10.17645/up.v5i4.3366
Access URL: https://doaj.org/article/5d27e9b213404ae4847279f29fc366c7
Accession Number: edsdoj.5d27e9b213404ae4847279f29fc366c7
ISSN: 21837635
DOI: 10.17645/up.v5i4.3366
Database: Directory of Open Access Journals