Seaside has been awarded the first Chairman’s Special Charter Award during the 27th Congress for New Urbanism (CNU) Charter Awards ceremony. The presentation took place in Louisville, Kentucky at the Muhammad Ali Center, with more than 1,000 attendees.

Seaside co-founder Robert Davis accepted the award from CNU Fellow Todd Zimmerman (Zimmerman/Volk Associates, Inc., Clinton, N.J.), who relayed comments from Juror Marcela Camblor-Cutsaimanis, “There is not another recent settlement”— and by ‘recent’ she meant from the past half century —“that has influenced more professionals, elected officials, public servants, and just people in general than Seaside.”

Zimmerman continued, “Those of us who witnessed, over decades, the evolution of Seaside and the Lyceum were privileged to recognize and absorb firsthand the elegance, flexibility, and efficiency of the New Urbanism’s principles — those same principles that we have since seen transform, revive and enhance urban neighborhoods both here and abroad.”

For nearly 40 years, Seaside, the birthplace of New Urbanism, has influenced the direction of architects and urban planners in their design of quality communities throughout the United States and beyond.

Since its inception in December 1981 by founders Robert and Daryl Davis, Seaside has been a master-planned community that has evolved from fondly remembered family vacations in Northwest Florida to the well-loved Emerald Coast destination for families throughout the world.

Today there are more than 220 New Urban style communities throughout the United States, all inspired by Seaside and its family-friendly footprint and building codes. Seaside’s unique combination of cottages (each with a porch and white picket fence), boutiques, eateries and walkable streets, invoke a charm that is reminiscent of turn-of-the-century homes that encourage visitors to slow down, take family walks, and enjoy the sea breeze from the Gulf of Mexico.

The Seaside Institute is the official nonprofit of Seaside and is located at 168 Smolian Circle, Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. The mission: “We Help People Create Great Communities,” through design and education, using Seaside as a living laboratory.

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