Southern Village: Revival of the Traditional Neighborhood Design

Chapel Hill, North Carolina boasts that is home to one of the best new urbanism communities in the country. Southern Village is a true new urbanism community with a village design. New urbanism communities are becoming one of the most popular types of neighborhoods for sales, as residents can live, work, and shop all within blocks of their homes. Southern Village is no exception to this rule.

Southern Village is a traditional neighborhood. There are tree-lined streets with on street parking. The streets are narrow. The walkability of the neighborhood is one of its strongest assets. Sidewalks are interconnected throughout the village. This feature makes it obvious that the neighborhood was designed using a new urbanism philosophy: design for people, not for cars.

Another new urbanism feature of the neighborhood is the design to include a front porch in all of the homes. A front porch helps foster a sense of community. As people sit on their front porches, they are able to socialize with those that walk by on the sidewalk. In Southern Village, homes are placed close to the sidewalk to facilitate this mingling of people with their neighbors.

One of the major challenges that designers faced when selling their vision for this new urbanism village was trying to convince people that homes with lots 1/10 to 1/3 the size of the competition's lot would sell. Once building started and people saw the uniqueness and importance of these small lots, sales flourished. Open space and recreation areas throughout the community make up for lack of yard space. People quickly saw that you were not just buying a home in Southern Village; you were buying a way of life.

The homes in the Southern Village neighborhood also promote income equality. This equality is another key characteristic of a new urbanism design. In new urbanism, condos, apartments, townhomes, and several sizes of single family homes exist. This balance of housing types is meant to help create an equal opportunity among people of different incomes and create cohesiveness to the village.