[thomasfl]

Poundbury in Dorchester (UK) was nothing but plain grass in the 1990'ies. Now Poundbury is a city that has generated more new jobs than new homes. The price for real estate is 30% higher than neighbouring cities. And they have yet to experience a traffic accident. Beautiful walkable cities is good for business.

[masklinn]

An other interesting new urbanism project — though I'd have a hard time calling it "beautiful" — is Louvain-La-Neuve in Belgium: a completely planned city resulting from the split of the "Catholic University of Leuven" into the flemish KU Leuven and the walloon UCL the city was set up such that the city center is entirely pedestrian, cars within the city center travel below the giant concrete slab which makes up the city's ground.

[SiempreViernes]

I would say it's main fault in the beauty department is that the centre is for students, and so there naturally wasn't much spent on its decoration. Certainly the heavy wear of being a student town in a country with easy access to alcohol does work to bring down the beauty too.

But it manages to give a pretty cosy impression, and with a night life that punches much above the weight of its population otherwise would indicate. Also they gave some good crepes there.

[jefftk]

Satellite: https://goo.gl/maps/36F1xKcz8EPPBwwu9

[bb101]

The last time we drove through Poundbury on a summer weekend, the town (it's not a city) was a ghost town. We tried to find somewhere pleasant to have lunch - i.e. open and not fast food - and utterly failed. It has a central town square with nothing going on. I'm sure the rest of Dorchester is interesting and full of life, but Poundbury wasn't.

[atombender]

What a strange town. It appears to have been built mimicking architectural styles from the 19th century, complete with bricked-up windows, mansard roofs, and use of old-fashioned materials and techniques. I do like the human-sized proportions (houses are generally 4 stories or less) and the use of softer-looking materials like brick and stone and rendered walls, but from the photos the town also seems subtly artificial, like a Disneyland version of England. You'd think there could be a middle ground here that didn't skip modernism entirely.