Planned Communities, Part II:

Levittown and Beyond

From the Levittowns of the 1950s, to the utopian visions embodied in Reston, Virginia and Columbia, Maryland; to contemporary urban design concepts such as Celebration, Florida, planned communities have taken many forms. This document provides a general overview of this topic as well as resources for further research.

Levittown, 1958. Source: Smithsonian's "Yesterday's Tommorrows" Exhibit	Levittowns Housing shortages faced many returning World War II veterans. Building materials had been in short supply during the War and residential construction had all but ceased. To meet the demand, enterprising real estate developer Abraham Levitt and his sons decided to build simple, inexpensive, mass-produced houses on a tract of land on Long Island, New York. The Levitts erected the houses quickly, at the rate of 30 per day, but they were still unable to keep up with demand.
Based upon the success of Levittown, Abraham Levitt expanded his building plan from the original 17,447 house community on Long Island to suburban Philadelphia (Levittown, Pa.), Washington, D.C. (Bowie, Md.), and New Jersey (Levittown, N.J.). These communities were criticized for their cookie-cutter design by social critics such as Malvina Reynolds as typified in her song "Little Boxes" (click here for the full lyrics). Despite such criticism, these communities provided much needed housing for returning veterans, and remain touchstones in the history of planned community development.
Reston, Virgina. Source: http://reston-va.com/.	Reston, Virginia Decades after the demographically driven success of Abraham Levitt's developments, another developer, Robert Simon, planned and built the city of Reston Virginia. Erected in 1962, the city was designed with a number of elements taken from the Garden City movement of the early 20th century (see earlier Topic of the Month on Garden Cities) including a buffer of parkland surrounding the city and 10 acres of parkland for every 1,000 residents. Simon's goals for the new city included high standards for structural and natural beauty as well as opportunities for living and working in the same community.
Simon's vision for the city was faithfully executed although his goal of financial success for the city was not attained. Ownership of Reston was relinquished to Gulf Oil (later Mobil), one of the largest initial investors in 1967. Today Reston is considered a model utopian suburb and its central plan is a blend of urban activity with country beauty.
James Rouse, and Frazar Wilde, Columbia, Maryland 1967 Source: http://www.columbiaassociation.com/.	Columbia, Maryland While Reston was being constructed, another developer across the Potomac, James W. Rouse, was planning the town of Columbia, Maryland approximately halfway between Baltimore, Maryland and Washington D.C. Rouse planned the city as a "garden for people to grow in," designed around clusters of villages that attempted to recreate small-town life. Columbia's founders made a conscious effort to encourage diversity among its citizens.
However, due to the vast start up expenses involved in building these towns and slow home sales, Columbia, like Reston, ended up in the hands of its major investor, Connecticut General Life Insurance Company.
Arial view of Seaside Florida. Source: http://www.seasidefl.com/.	New Urbanism After a period of dormancy, the idea of building idealized communities was re-born in the early 1980s as "New Urbanism." This movement emphasized livable, walkable communities that utilize mass transit and more intelligent use and reuse of previously developed buildings and land. Promoted in large part by the husband and wife architectural team of Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk (winners of the 2001 Vincent Scully Prize), this movement has caused a readjustment in the way urban planners think of building cities.
Seaside, Florida The city of Seaside, Florida was designed, by Duany and Plater-Zyerbeck and was the first such community to be built using New Urbanist ideas. Other communities across the country such as Kentlands, Maryland and Laguna West, California followed shortly thereafter. Just as its name implies, Seaside is a resort community. It is a relatively small community (80 acres) which is designed to be completely walkable. Although automobiles are permitted, the emphasis of many of the streets is on pedestrians. Celebration, Florida Built in 1994 by the Disney Corporation on the edge of their Walt Disney World property, Celebration Florida is one of the latest "New Urbanist" developments in the United States. Although currently only 3,500 residents live in Celebration, the city is planned for 12,000-15,000 residents. The city is designed, in accordance with "New Urbanist" ideals, with pedestrian friendly streets and walkways and a mixture of commercial and residential space allowing Celeberation's citizens to live and work in the same area.

Print Resources

• General

  Bloom, Nicholas. Suburban Alchemy: 1960s New Towns and the Transformation of the American Dream. Columbus: Ohio State University Press. 2001.

  Dietsch, Deborah K. "The Utopia Next Door: Searching for the Smart Suburbs of the Future? Look to Washington's Past." The Washington Post Sunday Magazine: 28 August 2001.

  Jackson, Kenneth T., Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1985.

• Levittowns

  Gans, Herbert, The Levittowners: Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community. New York: Columbia University Press. 1967.

• Reston, Virginia

  Lanz-Stewart, Lee. An historical perspective of the planning, development and provision of leisure services in a planned community : Reston, Virginia.Thesis. University of Maryland. 1983.

  Hochstein, Marc. "Planned communities at middle age". Grid 3(5) (June 2001): 66-71.

• Columbia, Maryland

  Hochstein, Marc. "Planned communities at middle age". Grid 3(5) (June 2001): 66-71.

  Tennenbaum, Robert. Creating a New City: Columbia, Maryland. Columbia, Maryland: Perry Publishing. 1996.

• New Urbanism

  Bogorad, Leonard. "Washington: a new urbanist frontier," Urban Land, 58(9), (September 1999): 72-77, 114-115.

• Florida towns: Seaside and Celebration

  Marshall, Alex. "Seaside turns twenty: the community that spawned a movement ages gracefully - but does it provide lessons for the world outside it?" Metropolis, 20(10), (June 2001):

  Pollan, Michael. "Town-Building Is No Mickey Mouse Operation". New York Times Magazine: December 14, 1997.

Archival Resources

George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia maintains the Planned Community Archives. Their website contains more information on the collection: http://www.gmu.edu/library/specialcollections/planned.html.

Web Pages

General New Urbanism Pages

Congress for New Urbanism. This site provides detailed information about New Urbanism, links to additional resources and bibliograpies on the topic, and a directory of New Urbanist communities around the country.

Directory of Urban and Regional Planning Web Pages. Provided by www.google.com, this is a comprehensive listing of sites on the topic of Urban and Regional planning.

Levittowns

Levittown: Documents of an Ideal American Suburb. This site, by University of Illinois at Chicago Professor Peter Hales, presents Levittown's cultural history using photographs, architectural drawings, and descriptive text.

Levittown at 50. This site, part of a larger site on Long Island History, includes a number of primary sources as well as descriptive articles on Levittown's formation.

Levittown Historical Society. This site has information on the history and founding of Levittown and the opportunity to contact them for more information.

Reston, Virgina

The Reston Association. Some historical information from the Reston, VA community site.

Columbia, Maryland

Columbia Association Archives. This site provides some basic information on the history of Columbia and provides contact information for further inquiry.

Seaside, Florida

Seaside, Florida: This is the official home page for the city of Seaside Florida.

The Seaside Institute: This is the homepage for an organization dedicated to the "study and refinement" of the urban experiment of Seaside, Florida.

Celebration, Florida

Celebration, Florida. This is the official home page for the city of Celebration Florida.

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