The 18th annual event from the Congress for the New Urbanism organized with assistance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Why this Congress?
Why attend CNU this year? There are three big reasons.
Most important? Its timely theme -- the linkage between the built environment and health. This year’s Congress is organized with the assistance of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Researchers and practitioners from the CDC will help weave the public health thread through the entire program, broadening opportunities for new partnerships and new approaches to building healthier communities.
Two more reasons not to miss the 2010 gathering: The Congress’s “urban lab” setting, and the reinvigorated Congress itself.
The Place
You may know metro Atlanta mainly through its media image, as an icon of urban ills: sprawling growth around a disinvested core, long commutes, fragmented and regional governments. In those ways, it resembles many American cities. But Atlanta has also become a remarkable showcase for addressing those ills.
Metro Atlanta has examples of forward-thinking, marketable and sustainable development at every scale and in every context, from great individual mixed-use buildings to entire walkable communities located everywhere from rural greenfields to urban brownfields. CNU18‘s tours and sessions will enable you to learn from these successes and invite you to help find solutions to problems that remain – for Atlanta, and for where you live and work.
Atlanta also offers unmatched intellectual resources with expertise and experience directly relevant to the Congress theme. In addition to our organizing partner, the CDC, these include the Atlanta Regional Commission, originator of the Livable Centers Initiative; Central Atlanta Progress, which has organized downtown stakeholders for long-range redevelopment projects; the intown universities, including Georgia Tech and its School of Architecture, whose faculty and studios are immersed in the region’s urban issues; and leading-edge non-profits such as the Southface Energy Institute, developer of the Earthcraft House and Earthcraft Communities certification programs. Meet and learn from them at CNU18.
The Event
If you attended previous CNUs, this year you will find a recommitment to “putting the congress back in the Congress.” CNU18’s sessions are expressly designed to invite discussion and debate, and especially to facilitate dialogue between people in the fields of urban design and public health. We are introducing a variety of new, more involving formats, including:
* “Diagnosis and Rx” encounters, where you have the opportunity to influence high-level policy development. Briefings from top officials and experts in specialized areas of urban design and public health will lead to talkback, critique and peer review.
* Pecha Kucha, an information-intensive, rapid-presentation format in which presenters show 20 slides for 20 seconds each, as a means of illustrating a wide variety of proposals and solutions.
* Urban labs, critical evaluations of recent design proposals for improving the health of Atlanta’s downtown.
* Initiative workshops, in which CNU members and newcomers work together in depth to develop urban design strategies and tools tools to advance the organization’s agenda.
Go here for updates on the CNU18 program.