DI's development coincided with rise of New Urbanism Movement

***image3***Daniel Island sometimes draws comparisons to director Peter Weir’s fictional New Urbanist town of Seahaven in his 1998 hit movie "The Truman Show."

Jim Carrey’s portrayal of a pathologically peppy insurance man, who is at first clueless about life outside his community, has a familiar ring.

The implication is that Daniel Island is sterile, boring, soulless and contrived.

Smug sniping like this misses the point, according to landscape architect Steve Dudash of DesignWorks LC.

Planned communities such as Daniel Island are about community pride, he said.

When Daniel Island’s master-planned community was still on the drawing board in 1993-94, his Charleston firm was picked to design the island’s award-winning landscapes and urban spaces. Fifteen years later, Dudash and company are still at it as they create new designs for the island’s expanding neighborhoods.

Dudash compares life on Daniel Island to the little upstate S.C. towns of his childhood.

"There were great small towns where you had sidewalks and trees," he said. "You could go two miles to the soda fountain and be shaded by canopies of trees the whole way. It was a wonderful place to grow up as a kid and I think that if you design a place for a child, something good is going to happen. People will know their neighbors and become engaged with each other."

This emphasis on traditional neighborhood design is one of the founding principles of New Urbanism, which was gaining more adherents in the early 1990s when Daniel Island was being planned.

In 1993, a group of architects and town planners who bemoaned America’s decades-long, automobile-oriented planning and development founded the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). Today, it has over 3,100 members in 20 countries and 49 states, according to its Web site www.cnu.org.

This emphasis on neighborhood and community resonated within the fledging Daniel Island Company, according to its communications director Julie Dombrowski.

"When a team was formed to develop a master plan for Daniel Island back in the early 1990s, New Urbanism was a brand-new movement," Dombrowski said. "Development of Seaside, Fla. (where "The Truman Show" was filmed) - one of the country’s first and most well-known New Urbanist communities - had begun... Some of the original planners who participated in creating Daniel Island’s master plan were closely involved with the CNU."

These traditional planning principles were a natural fit for Daniel Island, according to Dombrowski.

"As a modern-day extension of the city of Charleston, everyone agreed that respect for the heritage and history of the region, including the use of traditionally designed neighborhoods, parks and open green space, was critical," she said. "This was also a time when growth in the Charleston area was beginning to explode, so there was interest in creating a walkable community where people could live and work that would help address some of the city’s growth issues."

Because New Urbanism has a very strict set of guiding principles, the CNU does not recognize Daniel Island as a true New Urbanist community, Dombrowski noted. That is because the developers did not spread business and retail into each of the island’s neighborhoods.

"While this works for some smaller communities, for a development our size it was critical that businesses be massed in a town center that was easily accessible, although not necessarily walkable, from all neighborhoods as well as the I-526 interchange," Dombrowski said.

Consequently, Daniel Island is a kind of New Urbanist hybrid.

"I think New Urbanism in its truest form works for smaller subdivisions like I’On," Dombrowski said. "But for a full-fledged town like we’ve created here, we’ve found it necessary to combine the best of the New Urbanism principles with lessons from traditional small towns throughout the country to create a development plan that works for this unique community."

Dudash thinks that CNU purists are splitting hairs. With its pedestrian-friendly, compact neighborhoods and retail areas, Daniel Island reflects the essence of New Urbanist communities, he said.

Hybrid? New Urban? Does anyone care?

"Truman Show, Stepford Wives, Pleasantville -- I think it’s funny," one island resident said. "Who cares? I just love living here."