New Urbanism and American Planning presents the history of American planners' quest for good cities and shows how New Urbanism is a culmination of ideas that have been evolving since the nineteenth century. In her survey of the last hundred or so years of urbanist ideals, Emily Talen identifies four approaches to city-making, which she terms 'cultures': incrementalism, plan-making, planned communities, and regionalism. She shows how these cultures connect, overlap, and conflict and how most of the ideas about building better settlements are recurrent.

In the first part of the book Talen sets her theoretical framework and in the second part provides detailed analysis of her four 'cultures'.She concludes with an assessment of the successes and failures of the four cultures and the need to integrate these ideas as a means to promoting good urbanism in America.