• Equity, race, and placemaking: Reimagining how business improvement districts use their power

    BIDs will be essential actors in picking up the pieces of COVID-ravaged urban economies, but the BID model, like all economic development tools, must adapt to fuel inclusive 21st Century places.
    Three months of Zoom calls have taught us that every city planner in the country has a copy of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker prominently displayed on his or her bookshelf. Let’s remind ourselves that Robert Moses—the mid-20 th Century New York master builder who is the subject of Caro’s epic...Read more

  • Housing choice can make cities more affordable and resilient

    Durham, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia, are part of a nationwide trend of reforming single-family-only zones to allow for a diversity of housing options.
    Cities like Atlanta and Durham, North Carolina, are making changes to their zoning ordinance to substantially increase housing choices in former single-family-only (SFO) zones, according to experts at CNU 28. CNU 28.A Virtual Gathering , kicked off June 10 with 83 sessions and 17 special events,...Read more

  • Preventing displacement from a new transit line

    Connecting Crossroad explores how to preserve affordable housing while improving the public realm in Langley Park, an immigrant neighborhood in Maryland. The plan won a 2020 CNU Student Charter Award for Sara Ghafer-Samar at the University of Maryland.
    The Purple Line, a 16-mile-long, east-west light rail line under construction in the Maryland suburbs of DC, is going through the heart of Langley Park, a majority-Hispanic neighborhood in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The postwar suburb, built between 1945 and 1965, has an automobile-oriented...Read more

  • CNU statement on George Floyd

    The Board of Directors of the Congress for the New Urbanism is heartbroken, along with so many Americans, at the death of George Floyd and the long line of tragedies that continue to lay bare the persistence of deep-seated racism in our country. As we all struggle to come to terms with these events...Read more