As a firm, we use the term “Traditional Neighborhood Development” quite often. But what does it mean? And why is TND important to the economic and environmental sustainability of our region?
This marks the first in a series of blog posts about TND and its role in the southern Vermont and New Hampshire region.
Traditional Neighborhood Development is a planning concept that models new development on historic forms of development: dense residential neighborhoods, mixed-use downtowns, and streets designed around pedestrians rather than vehicles.
Why do we encourage our clients to use TND concepts when they’re planning new developments?
First, because we’re biased: a lot of us live and work in downtown Brattleboro, and find our quality of life to be quite high thanks to the walkable, dense nature of our community. We have the kind of historic downtown that TND concepts seek to emulate.
Second, we find TND offers a lot of benefits, from community building and civic engagement to lowered fossil fuel use and increased local economic development.
There are a lot of reasons for this, which will be explored in future posts, but the bottom line is that people—us, our clients, and residents—feel comfortable in and drawn to TND.
See some of our TND projects here.