Learning from Seaside`s Master Plan

Review the design of Seaside, an unincorporated master-planned community in Florida, USA, brings to light issues related to rethinking design standards and how people appropriate public spaces. It includes urban and building patterns found in traditional American towns and cities. Characteristics that were not a novelty in the years 1970 when the design of Seaside was conceived. The interest resides into the way the urban tissue was framed using the old patterns and the garden cities principles. This monograph is concerned with the basic diagram used for the town design that cannot be considered as a good one. Nowadays, at summer time, observing the Town Central Square crowded with people, cars parked and many cars passing by on the town access road brings to discussion a critical approach to such diagrams. The thinking sequence related to this context comes from the analysis of the area, particularly the proximity between the regional road and Central Square..