A shift in the production of the built environment exposes the many elements that go into its realization. The New Urbanism, a recent movement in urban design and suburban development, constitutes just such a shift. This dissertation assumes that the built environment is a social process and applies a variety of theorists to explain the mechanism of its production. Bruno Latour's translation model for fact building is enlisted to show how support is built for a coherent vision of a novel built environment. Pierre Bourdieu's concept of field illustrates how the dispositions and practices associated with professions operate on that process. Harvey Molotch's research on design shows how these structured, social actions are ultimately bound into material things.

The research shows, first, that conditions growing out of post-World War II suburban development in the United States—political-economic, cultural, and professional—defined the structural context out of which the New Urbanism arose. More importantly, it explains how New Urbanists have responded to the opportunities and constraints defined by the post-postwar context, concentrating their most distinct contribution in the suburbs. In particular, the New Urbanism has capitalized upon a growing popular resistance to suburban development and crises in the professions of planning and architecture, while adapting to the existing land-use regulatory context and the private market for housing and commercial real estate. This adaptation, in particular, has allowed the movement to effect a real shift in the process of suburban development. A case study of the planning and construction of the Kentlands in Gaithersburg, Maryland, shows how all of these processes hit the ground and play out at the smallest scale.