After suburbia, the new urbanism offers a fresh start to designing human settlements in North America. The movement returns to the traditional American models of human settlements to design the suburbs, to create new communities. The new urbanism seems to use the traditional town model without questioning any of its potentially negative aspects.

In this thesis, the author questions several aspects of the new urbanism movement. The criticism focuses on town location and town pattern. Some influential examples of automobile-age U.S. suburbs, which the movement ignores, are analyzed with new urbanist examples to point out that there may be better ways to shape the suburbs than the traditional American town model.

As a conclusion of this thesis, an alternative proposal is presented for Kentlands, Maryland, a mostly completed example of the movement. Unlike the new urbanist developments, this proposal is developed within a regional strategy.