Patterns of work in New Urbanist communities
Neighborhood store in an older town; such scattered retail and production sites are seldom found in New Urbanist communities
Just as in standard suburbs and not as in traditional towns the economy of New Urbanist developments relies on wage earners departing each day from the community and working elsewhere. Suburban New Urbanist communities are not independent economic units; this shows in their general absence of productive sites. They are inserted into extended systems of economic linkages. This is not surprising; it is true more and more of traditional small towns as well. The advertising images of a self-contained community pass over this linkage, but "everybody knows" what is going on.
In New Urbanist developments within traditional cities, of course, there is a clearer imagistic mix of friendly neighborhood and economic links to elsewhere.