• Introducing CNU 25.Seattle

    Here's a preview of what you will see and do in Seattle at the 25th annual Congress for the New Urbanism this May.
    It’s been over four months since CNU 24.Detroit, and the buzz still hasn’t worn off. Our 2016 Congress drew 1483 attendees from 43 states and 28 countries. Nine out of ten of you called it one of the best Congresses ever. That’s big. Thanks to the support of all our partners, CNU 24.Detroit was a...Read more

  • 'Good bones' are a key to strong communities

    Grids are easy and inexpensive—they are a natural way to design streets. But the convention for much of the last century is to model streets on sewer systems.
    A body without good bones will fall apart. And as many of us have come to realize, streets are the bones of communities. A community that lacks good streets will suffer—in its economy, its social well-being, and its health. When people who study cities and towns say that a place “has good bones,”...Read more

  • From parking lot to urban tour-de-force

    Urban design and architecture on a leftover parcel bring a campus and a Los Angeles neighborhood closer together.
    For the University of California in Los Angeles, UCLA Weyburn is more than just graduate student housing. The 500-unit apartment block and community building ties together a fragmented part of the university’s campus, realizing the vision of a thirty-year-old master plan. Built on what was formerly...Read more

  • The real ‘Bilbao Effect’

    Gehry's Guggenheim museum itself did not make the difference—rather the new public realm attracted and kept people and businesses in Bilbao.
    Note: This article is part of a collaboration between Island Press and Public Square on a series of articles based on recently published books on subjects related to urbanism. The question 'What makes a great city?' is not about the most beautiful, convenient, or well-managed city; it isn’t even...Read more