Faking It? So is New Urbanism real?

There I was in Seaside, Fla., cradle of New Urbanism, mothership of a major architectural movement, a place that gets as much ink in architecture circles as Madonna gets in the real world.
Since Seaside got famous in the 1980s (it broke ground in 1981), critics have said it’s Disney-esque, unreal, nostalgic, elitist – a haunt for Stepford Spouses.
So, what was it really like? (Add your two cents' worth, below.) Until I went there for several days last week, I reserved judgment. You can’t really assess places until you see them. I’m a fan of New Urbanism, or at least of what New Urbanism really is, as opposed to what some critics or cheesy developers say it is.
What's New Urbanism? An architectural movement to revive the ways neighborhoods, towns and cities developed for centuries. But in the 20th century those patterns were scrapped by, among others, Modernist architects, grandiose urban planners, single-use zoning laws and traffic engineers. A New Urbanist neighborhood has narrower streets, pedestrian comforts (Seaside doesn’t really have many sidewalks, though it’s easy to walk through), connected streets, a blend of dwellings (houses, apartments, townhouses, etc.) and uses (residences, stores, workplaces). Houses sit close to each other and the street, to encourage neighborliness. Densities are higher than typical suburbia.
Seaside, designed by the Miami firm of Duany Plater-Zyberk, was the first place to get famous for honing those principles, although other architects and planners were also espousing them. Developer Robert Davis made a ton of money, and the place is hugely popular.
My verdict? Seaside is charming, especially if you like picket fences and Southern-style homes with big porches. (Most academic types and architecture writers don’t.)
Is Seaside real? Of course not. Yellow card! Is Wild Dunes real? Kiawah? Figure Eight Island? It’s a beach development.
Is it only for rich people? Again, yellow card! It’s a beach development. As designed, Seaside had more affordable places than most beach resorts. But it was wildly successful, so prices zoomed. The last undeveloped beach lot – 50 feet wide – just sold for $4 million.
Is it elitist? I see why the place sets some people’s teeth on edge. The marketing prose is excruciatingly high-concept – e.g. short gushing essays about how special it is that Southerners give names to their beach houses – with the faintest aroma of self-congratulation. It offers wine festivals, chamber music on the lawn, high-end decor shops and an artist-in-residence program. It did give me the urge to prop a rusty Corvair up on cinderblocks and serve Cheerwine and Slim Jims at my next soiree.
Conclusion: Seaside is lovely (the Ruskin Place courtyard/park is particularly beautiful) , but no longer unique – which is why it’s so significant. It proved customers crave places built to look less like Levitttown and more like Chapel Hill or Charleston. It was a demonstration project.
And it launched a huge movement in planning and architecture. Without Seaside, there’d probably be no Baxter in Fort Mill, no Afton Village in Concord, no First Ward Place housing project in Charlotte, no Southern Village in Chapel Hill. That’s its major significance. Whether it’s “real” or “elitist” is, in the end, flatly irrelevant.