| Over the past two decades, society has become more aware of its impact on the environment. This is no more apparent than in the United States where the environment has been at the heart of elections, public policy, and grassroots movements. One way that Americans are trying to protect their urban environment is through urban planning techniques, such as those espoused by the New Urbanist movement. The goal of this research is to understand people's perceptions of urban sustainable development and the perceived role that new urbanism plays in achieving environmental sustainability.;Traditional and new urbanist neighborhoods in Denver, Colorado and Austin, Texas were evaluated using a survey, which was administered to residents in both types of neighborhoods to determine environmental behavior and socio-demographics. Multiple regression and discriminant analysis were used to analyze the differences between the traditional and new urbanist neighborhoods. A landscape appraisal rubric was also used to determine how well the neighborhoods fit the model of new urbanism and analyze the differences between neighborhood designs.;Findings indicate that people live with others most like themselves and where their values are most like those of their neighbors. The new urbanist design is what attracts people to these neighborhoods and the design itself encourages sustainability and "good" environmental behavior by energy and consumption reduction. The findings also suggest that what matters most about sustainability and "good" environmental behavior is the possibility for it to occur and to have the tools needed to act responsible, which means the education for people to understand it. |
