Accessibility of Neotraditional Neighborhoods: A Review of Design Concepts, Policies, and Recent Literature

Neotraditional Neighborhood Design (NTND) has gained increasing attention from professional, academic, and popular circles during the past ten years. This review establishes a baseline evaluation of NTND, with the goal of providing the background for more specific research in the future. The first section of the paper orients NTND in a historical context, reviewing the main subdivision design trends of the past century and how NTND has either diverged or borrowed from them. The second section of the paper focuses on a review of current issues and policies related to this planning trend, with special attention directed toward transportation and land use research and the effect of neotraditional design on accessibility of the transportation system. The paper concludes by offering an assessment of the potential of NTND to address growth-related problems in suburban areas and by identifying key unmet research needs.