New Urbanist house styles
Although New Urbanist spatial principles do not demand traditional house styles, marketing for the developments makes heavy use of traditional imagery.
For the most part, suburban home buyers are not negotiating with architects; they are purchasing ready-made products. In America traditional house styles fit buyers' preconceptions, while modern styles are taken to signal either eccentricity or poverty. As a consequence, traditional styles can facilitate the goal of mixing income levels, since when all the buildings share these styles, lower income houses lack the stigma that was attached to modernist styles and public housing.
Even if the house styles in a development were starkly modernist, New Urbanist planning would still insist on architectural controls that avoid both context-ignoring monuments and cookie-cutter sameness. The result may be greater uniformity than in a traditional town that has had its houses built over a longer time span, but less sameness than in most subdivisions.