American Radburn design for public housing

Radburn design housing (also called Radburn housing, Radburn design, Radburn principle, or Radburn concept) is a concept for planned housing estates, based on a design that was originally used in Radburn, New Jersey, United States.

The design is typified by the backyards of homes facing the street and the fronts of homes facing one another, over common yards. It is an offshoot of American designs from the English garden city movement and culminated in the design of the partly-built 1929 Radburn estate.

In the US, the Radburn idea reached its ultimate expression in Los Angeles, California, with the design and construction of Clarence Stein and Robert Alexander's Baldwin Hills Village, now known as 'The Village Green'. It opened as apartments for lease to the public on December 7, 1941. Between 1973 and 1978, it was transformed into an HOA community of 629 unit-owners. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark.

It is often referred to as an urban design experiment that is typified by failure because of its laneways being used as common entries and exits to the houses, helping to isolate communities and to encourage crime. There have been efforts to 'de-Radburn' or demolish some Radburn designed public housing areas in the US.

When interviewed in 1998, the architect responsible for introducing the design to public housing in New South Wales, Australia, Philip Cox, was reported to have admitted with regard to a Radburn-designed estate in the suburb of Villawood: "Everything that could go wrong in a society went wrong.... It became the centre of drugs, it became the centre of violence and, eventually, the police refused to go into it. It was hell."

The impact of Radburn's urban form on energy consumption for short, local trips was considered in a 1970 study by John Lansing of the University of Michigan. The study found Radburn's design to have important implications for energy conservation: 47% of its residents shopped for groceries on foot, compared to 23% for Reston, Virginia (another Radburn-type development but more car-oriented) and only 8% for a nearby, unplanned community.

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