Traditional Neighbourhood Design
Traditional Neighbourhood Design (TND) is an urban design approach that aims to make places more sustainable, vibrant, safe, attractive and liveable by ensuring that developments have an affinity with the context and space from which they grow; provide increased levels of amenity, safety and diversity; encourage walking and cycling and reduced car dependency and enhance local identity and community. Site constraints (land ownership, fragmented titles, environmental and cultural features) must be balanced with the overarching objectives listed below to promote sustainability at all levels.
Supporters of TND claim it offers the following benefits:
- bringing most of the activities of daily living into walking distance, everyone gains independence of movement, especially the elderly and young;
- reducing the number and length of vehicle trips, traffic congestion is minimised, the expenses of road construction are limited, and air pollution is reduced;
- providing streets and public spaces of comfortable scale with defined spatial quality, neighbours can meet and watch over their collective security increasing safety;
- providing appropriate densities at easy walking distance to public transport stops, public transport becomes a viable alternative to motor vehicles;
- providing a full range of housing types and work places, people of all ages and economic status are integrated and the bonds of an authentic community are formed;
- providing suitable civic buildings and spaces, community cohesion is encouraged;
- providing an interconnected grid connectivity and permeability are enhanced; making it easier to get around, reducing length and time of trips, promoting links to internal and external community uses and encouraging walking and cycling;
- providing a series of smaller linked neighbourhoods of a walkable scale, each with a strong sense of character and ‘heart’, a sense of local community and feeling of safety are created.