Nostalgia and Small Town America: The Rhetoric of New Urbanism as Inspired by Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk

• In Event: Scholar to Scholar II

Abstract

This paper examines architects Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk’s “The Second Coming of the American Small Town,” their 1992 essay that inspired the popular architectural movement known as New Urbanism. This paper offers a close reading of the essay to reveal the authors use of nostalgia and their rhetorical application of civil religious discourse which helped to generate the movement’s mass appeal both then and now.

Author

• Kristin Stimpson, University of Texas, Austin