About
About NewVistas
NewVistas is a constitutional framework for organizing prosperous, resilient, and sustainable communities. It integrates governance, physical infrastructure, economic stewardship, education, transportation, agriculture, and public services into a coherent pattern capable of serving generations to come.
Although NewVistas was formally organized in 2015, its origins reach back more than four decades. During the oil crisis of 1973, David Hall became convinced that many of the assumptions underlying modern industrial civilization were fundamentally unsustainable. The crisis revealed the vulnerability of economic systems dependent upon centralized production, long supply chains, and continual resource expansion. It prompted a lifelong search for a more resilient and enduring pattern of community life.
During this period, David encountered a collection of revelations and plans produced by Joseph Smith in the early 1830s. Among these were the Plat of the City of Zion and the Plan of the House of the Lord. Rather than viewing these documents simply as historical artifacts, David recognized in them the outline of a comprehensive civilizational pattern—one capable of organizing communities in a way that could provide stability, prosperity, efficient resource use, and strong social cohesion.
The documents proposed an integrated approach to community design in which physical layout, governance, economics, education, public services, and culture worked together as a unified whole. David became convinced that the principles embodied in these plans could be implemented in the modern world through advances in technology, engineering, transportation, communications, economics, and organizational design.
Over the following decades, David’s engineering background, entrepreneurial experience, and extensive research enabled him to develop and refine these ideas into what eventually became NewVistas. His work focused not merely on preserving historical concepts, but on reconstructing them for contemporary conditions and future generations. The result is a framework that seeks to address many of the challenges facing modern societies, including housing affordability, infrastructure costs, economic instability, food security, transportation inefficiency, educational transformation, environmental stewardship, and long-term sustainability.
The significance of the original planning documents has also been recognized outside NewVistas. In 1996, the American Planning Association designated the Plat of the City of Zion as a National Planning Landmark, acknowledging its influence on community planning and urban design. For NewVistas, however, the importance of these documents extends beyond their historical significance. They serve as inspiration for a living pattern that can continue to evolve while remaining grounded in enduring principles.
Today, NewVistas presents a scalable model for community development built upon several foundational ideas: shared stewardship of productive assets, clearly defined constitutional offices, protection of human dignity, productive enterprise, integrated social systems, lifelong education, and a commitment to ensuring that every individual has the opportunity to achieve a sufficient standard of living. Rather than addressing individual problems in isolation, NewVistas seeks to create a complete and coherent framework in which governance, economics, infrastructure, and community life reinforce one another.
The objective is not merely to build a single community, but to develop a replicable pattern that can be adapted to different cultures, geographies, and circumstances throughout the world. By combining timeless principles with modern innovation, NewVistas aims to provide a practical blueprint for sustainable and universal prosperity.
For readers interested in the historical origins of the pattern, see Where the Pattern Comes From and Why it Matters and David Hall’s 2021 interview discussing the development of the NewVistas concept.
For more information on historical background, see the article “Where the Pattern Comes From and Why it Matters” and this interview from 2021.
FAQs
Many so-called “green” efforts are only addressing symptoms, not root causes. Even the more ambitious efforts are not truly viable solutions in that they will not scale to all humanity. The NewVistas pattern is special because it is the only community pattern that can scale in a sustainable way to everyone on Earth.
Take a look at the Implementation page for more about when and how NewVistas will go from concept to reality.
Many current towns and cities are built with grid-type layouts, and most buildings in a given area look alike. Indeed, in most towns and cities a degree of sameness is even enforced by way of zoning. Variety is possible in a NewVistas community in that each building can vary in appearance by way of how its façade is built. Some examples and more details are here and here.
All that said, it’s important to remember that NewVistas puts a huge emphasis on green space and doing things at a human scale. This means that even in the heart of the community, people will feel more like they’re in a park or out in nature than in the typical urban environment (endless concrete and asphalt). Note, for example, how much more greenery is intrinsic to NewVistas than many variations of the Barcelona-type “superblocks” (as one paper puts it, “Superblock design reduces space assigned to cars to enable alternative uses for improving liveability and sustainability”).
There are no religious requirements at all; this is strictly a secular undertaking. The NewVistas pattern establishes a physical, social, and economic system that applies to all humans and can accommodate any culture or religion that doesn’t violate its basic principles.
Median home size varies widely across the world and even within the United States, and number of residents per home varies as well. Over time, the trend has been an increase in home size and a decrease in the number of residents, so NewVistas is certainly going against the grain. Still, high density is relative; NewVistas is very high density but not ridiculous (countries like the US and Australia are the outliers in their extreme low density).
The extreme high density has extreme benefits. No cars, all amenities within walking distance, and, even with such high density within the community, buildings occupy a very low percentage of surface land, so everyone enjoys unobstructed green vistas from their apartment windows and patios. Many more details at the Physical Campus page and articles and subpages linked there.
The low-risk financial model of a NewVistas community supports a wide variety and number of business opportunities. Markets, restaurants, retail and specialty stores are established and operated by private businesses. Community structures include gathering areas for cultural and social events, sports facilities, swimming pools, and outdoor gardens. Residents can experience all of the activities of daily living within walking distance of home.