Is traditional urbanism dead?

In today's urban design world, we often see unattractive new developments filling the empty spaces assigned for new communities to flourish. Beauty has become the forgotten piece of the puzzle of today’s modern design hotchpotch, where the focus is  on quantity over quality. Derived from housing stock shortfalls and cost of living constraints, the temptation to build for utility has become the norm, to the detriment of those wanting a pleasant place to live. What if traditional developments (i.e. new urbanism) holds the key to resolving this problem?