Seaside helped change how America builds new towns.

It began with 80 acres along the Florida Gulf Coast and an idea from Robert and Daryl Davis.

They wanted to build the kind of beach town they remembered from older places. Homes with porches. Streets made for walking. Shops nearby. Public spaces where people naturally crossed paths. A town that felt coherent even as different people designed its buildings.

Robert and Daryl brought in young architects Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk to create the plan. The group traveled through Florida and the South studying older towns, measuring streets, documenting houses, and learning from places that had evolved before modern development conventions took hold.

Construction began in 1981 with two houses, one street, and a pavilion leading to the beach.

From there, Seaside grew around a compact town center, narrow interconnected streets, small blocks, pedestrian paths, cottages pulled close to the street, shops mixed with homes, and civic buildings given prominent locations. Every residence sits within a short walk of the town center, and streets terminating at the Gulf lead to shared beach pavilions.

The team also created an Urban Code that governed the form of buildings and their relationship to the street. That early experiment became an important predecessor to the form-based codes now used in communities across the country.

Seaside became one of the foundational places of New Urbanism. Ideas tested here spread into developments, neighborhoods, zoning codes, and planning practices far beyond the Florida Panhandle.

The town kept evolving too. More than 150 designers have contributed buildings over the years. Shops and restaurants arrived incrementally. Schools, a chapel, an amphitheater, parks, and other civic spaces became part of the plan.

A development that began with two houses became evidence that Americans could still build a town around walking, public life, and the spaces between buildings.