• Visualizing 30 years of growth in Charlotte’s core

    As Charlotte continues to grow, let’s take a look back through the past 30 years via Google Earth to see just how far the Queen City has come. Images are via GoogleEarth and are 1993, 2002, 2012, and 2023 captures with a couple of older bonus images from Brooklyn Village. Uptown You know those...Read more

  • Car-free, mobility-rich urbanism becoming a reality

    Designers of Culdesac developments in Tempe and Atlanta report progress in creating a built environment for shared mobility, as the first residents move in to the Arizona project.
    The first mobility-rich, car-free (at least in residential areas) Culdesac community is now becoming occupied, and the public spaces and buildings are living up to the attention-grabbing designs and renderings, architect and urban designer Daniel Parolek of Opticos Design told CNU. The first...Read more

  • Assessing Poundbury at 30

    In the year of its founder’s coronation, a conference of key partners this fall will examine in detail the pioneering New Urbanist development’s many lessons.
    There is a new town in England whose achievements might draw the envy of any American planner: a beautiful walkable layout with ample provisions for walking, cycling and transit as well as the car; 35 percent permanent affordable housing, “pepper-potted” indistinguishably across the town, and not...Read more

  • Building tall where it counts

    Embracing neighborhood change to address the housing crisis.
    America is experiencing a housing crisis! While this crisis affects communities across the country, it is most pronounced in and near a few major cities. There, housing supply has failed to keep up with growing demand for decades, resulting in prices that are out of range for even middle-class...Read more