¿Cual es la mejor frase para expresar "new urbanism"?
Hi,
I´m writing an essay about the idea of the city in literature, and I want to refer to "new urbanism", but I don´t know the best way to express it.
- El urbanismo nuevo
- El nuevo urbanismo
Would there be a difference in meaning? I know sometimes "nuevo" can precede the noun, but I´m not clear why.
In English, "new urbanism" refers to both new in time (following the exodus to the suburbs in the 1950s, now people are more interested in moving back to cities) and also in kind (cities are supposed to be more walkable, more sustainable, contain mixed land use, etc).
Thanks in advance!
7 Answers
Taking into account the subtle differences in adjective collocation in Spanish, in this case I would say el nuevo urbanismo. Like when you say la nueva literatura latinoamericana.
"El nuevo urbanismo" sin dudarlo
Have a look at these links:
http://www.arqhys.com/articulos/urbanismo-nuevo.html
I don't know the answer but it reminds me of this adjective placement article:
This is an example of it, depending on where you place it it can change the meaning:
nuevo: el nuevo libro, the brand-new book, the newly acquired book; el libro nuevo, the newly made book
grande: un gran hombre, a great man; un hombre grande, a big man
Kattya, althought this may sound a bit complex I´ll try to provide further explanation for my choice, because it´s not an easy subject. But it´s not based on the fact that sometimes it sounds better to put adjectives first, as some may suppose. At least not in this case. I think there`s a difference in meaning and I´ve been trying to put in words a concept that for many native speakers is almost intuitive. There are many linguistics features that have not been thoroughly researched, especially those related to discourse, so we will never stop learning. Indeed, I think this adjectives collocation is one of those characteristics of Spanish that we, native speakers, find very hard to account for because it seems it´ s just left to personal taste or preferences.
According to some authors, there are mainly 3 aspects or uses of adjectives in Spanish:
1 – Qualifying use: those adjectives expressing qualities or properties of nouns (external or internal, permanent or eventual)
una casa amplia = a large house
un libro antiguo = an ancient book
2 – Relating use: those adjectives relating noun with a determinate environment, characterizing it as a member of a class.
políticas estatales = state policies
calle peatonal = pedestrian street
3 – Modal / deictic use: those adjectives used to deictically quantify, localize or set the modified noun. Also, referring deictically to the speaker´s view of the noun.
la nueva literatura = the new literature
el nuevo urbanismo = the new urbanism
viejos recuerdos = old memories (thanks to Issabela)
So I think this deictic use of the adjective is the correct one in this case, because this urbanism is new within certain conceptualization and structuring of space and time. It´s not new in itself, as an object might be (qualifying use). And urbanism does not correspond to a specific environment as conceptualized in Relating Use.
Now if you want to know if I thought of all this before choosing one way or another to place adjectives the answer is NO.
I´m just trying to give my best explanation and, as I said, there´s still a lot of things about language usage lacking theoretical explanation.
It's exactly the same kattya. That's the way it is said in Spanish... and "el nuevo urbanismo" even sounds better to the ear.
Have a look at the links I posted above 
Taking into account the subtle differences in adjective collocation in Spanish, in this case I would say el nuevo urbanismo.
Can someone explain this a bit more? Obviously I guessed wrong above... What would "el urbanismo nuevo" mean?
So if I want to emphasize that new urbanism is a new kind of urbanism, then it should be "el urbanismo nuevo"?
