A conversation with Joseph Barnes: There Is No 20% Version of a Great Neighbourhood
What can a conventional developer take from New Urbanism communities such as I’ON and East Beach apply to a more typical subdivision?
It sounds like a practical question. Most developers are not working with the same land, market, budget or long-term vision as a community like these, so the reasonable instinct is to identify a smaller set of transferable ideas. Could a developer adopt 20 per cent of the model and still capture some of its value?
When I posed that question to Joseph Barnes, his response challenged the premise itself.
Barnes has spent decades working across architecture, master planning and real estate development, with experience on communities including Celebration, I’On, East Beach and Hartness. His central point was that successful neighbourhood design cannot always be divided into independent features and adopted in small portions.
There may be no meaningful “20 per cent version” of a great neighbourhood because the parts work as a system. Once key elements are reduced beyond the point at which they function, the result does not deliver 20 per cent of the benefit. It simply won’t deliver any of it.
The difference between a four-foot and an eight-foot porch
Barnes illustrated the problem through the simple example of a front porch.
An eight-foot-deep porch can function as an outdoor room. It can accommodate chairs and tables, allow people to move comfortably and create a usable transition between the private home and the public street. Residents can spend time there rather than merely pass through it.
Reduce that porch to four feet and the outcome is not simply a porch that performs at half the level. It may no longer be deep enough to support the activities that gave it value in the first place.
The dimension has been reduced by 50 per cent, but the functional and social value may have fallen much further.
A neighbourhood is a system, not a checklist
A porch does not create community on its own. Its value also depends on its distance from the sidewalk, its height above the street, the treatment of the front yard and whether pedestrians feel connected to the homes around them.
The same principle applies across a neighbourhood.
- A sidewalk works when it connects useful destinations and provides a comfortable walking environment.
- A park works when it is visible, accessible and located along routes people already use.
- A narrow street can support slower driving, but only when the buildings, parking, landscaping and engineering reinforce that condition.
That is why successful neighbourhoods are difficult to reproduce by selecting individual ideas from several admired communities.
The objective is not to copy the visible features. It is to understand the relationships that make them work.
Begin with the intended experience
The practical lesson for developers, planners and designers is to begin with the experience the neighbourhood is intended to support.
Should children be able to walk safely between homes and parks? Should porches support everyday use? Should streets encourage slow driving? Should public spaces be visible from surrounding homes? Should different housing types still contribute to a coherent public realm?
Once the intended experience is clear, the team can identify the dimensions and relationships required to produce it.
This approach also helps distinguish between flexible elements and genuine non-negotiables. Not every detail needs to be protected, but the team must understand which decisions carry the greatest influence over the final result.
The Business Plan Comes First
Barnes also emphasized that good neighbourhood design has to begin with the business plan, not sit beside it as a separate design exercise. Before drawing streets or deciding on architectural character, the developer needs to understand who the project is for, what the market can support, what buyers will pay for, how quickly homes need to sell and how the project will be phased. Those assumptions impact everything that follows, from lot sizes and housing types to amenities and the level of investment in the public realm. The important point is that design quality and financial performance should not be treated as competing objectives. A strong plan identifies where better design creates differentiation and value, then builds those decisions into the development model from the beginning rather than trying to add them later.
Protect the performance, not the appearance
The central lesson from my conversation with Barnes was not that every developer should reproduce I’ON or follow one architectural style.
It was that neighbourhood design must be understood as an interconnected system.
An eight-foot porch reduced to four feet is not necessarily half a porch.
Sometimes, it is no longer a porch at all. And sometimes, there is no 20 per cent version of a great neighbourhood.
The ten strongest points he raised were:
- Start with the business plan, not the master plan. The physical plan has to support the development model.
- A great neighbourhood is a system, not a collection of features. Streets, blocks, buildings, and public spaces have to work together.
- There is not a “20% version” of good design. Some elements have functional thresholds.
- Design the public realm before optimizing the individual house product. The street, block, frontage and public spaces should establish the framework rather than allowing standard builder models to dictate the neighbourhood.
- Design review is too late to create quality. If the lot, floor plan, construction and budget are already fixed, review becomes an attempt to repair the design rather than shape it.
- Bring builders and architects together early. At projects such as Celebration and East Beach, workshops and direct collaboration helped builders understand the vision before their products were locked in.
- Take the team to see good places in person. Walking successful neighbourhoods helps builders and designers understand the relationship between buildings and public space.
- Variety needs rules. The goal is neither identical buildings nor complete architectural freedom. Protect the things that shape the neighbourhood while allowing individual buildings to differ.
- Good design management is also financial risk management. Getting alignment early can reduce delays, consultant costs, carrying costs and conflict between builders and the development team.
- The vision has to survive the entire development process. A strong master plan alone is not enough. The original idea has to guide it all, otherwise hundreds of small compromises gradually erase it.