• Playa Vista: High density, happy residents

    A quarter century after the iconic Los Angeles development was launched, a community survey shows high levels of resident satisfaction.
    Playa Vista in Los Angeles was one of the most ambitious and artistically stunning early New Urbanist plans, designed in a 1989 charrette by two of the movement's founding firms. A major developer, Maguire Thomas Partners, called DPZ CoDesign, led by a young Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk...Read more

  • Study calls for land use changes to improve road safety

    Land use has a profound and largely unacknowledged role in the death and injury of pedestrians and bicyclists, according to researchers. There are two answers—but one is far superior.
    New research from Florida Atlantic and Columbia universities examines why the US has failed to make streets safer for “vulnerable users”—people outside of cars, especially pedestrians and bicyclists. That failure is evident despite the proliferation of Complete Streets and Vision Zero policies over...Read more

  • Charleston designs the future of affordable housing

    Project 3500 pre-designs and pre-permits thousands of affordable housing units on city-owned land.
    Charleston, South Carolina, recently unveiled a potentially groundbreaking strategy to build thousands of pre-designed, permitted affordable housing units on city-owned land. The city is working with Savannah-based Sottile & Sottile on urban design and British architects Ben Pentreath and Hugh...Read more

  • Applying New Urbanism principles to harness future growth

    Here are the remarks of CNU President Mallory Baches at the opening keynote of CNU34 in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on May 13.
    Good afternoon! I am Mallory Baches, and it is my honor to be the President of CNU and welcome each of you to Northwest Arkansas! Alongside my co-lead, CNU’s Executive Director Margaret Gattis, I am proud to lead this organization that offers such a profound sense of hope for communities: a vision...Read more