• Apartments that engage the street

    Stoops, dooryards, and porches make more engaging street frontages for apartments than the typical common lawn.
    Urban apartment buildings have made great strides in engaging adjacent streetscapes over the last 25 years. On primary streets, building amenities allow for commercial-like frontages and expanses of glass storefronts. On residential streets, the ground-floor apartments often directly access the...Read more

  • Thinking globally, building locally

    A gathering in Italy will join new urbanists with international allies to explore and learn from great urbanism past and present.
    Cortona, Italy, may seem idyllic, but it faces many of the same challenges as other towns and rural regions in other countries: the need to provide viable economic opportunities, especially for young people; the need to build a healthy and resilient urbanism in the face of growing climate threats;...Read more

  • Beauty is essential for sustainable cities

    Modern science explains the role of beauty in creating places that can save the planet. Fortunately, beautiful places are within our power to design and build.
    The motto of the CNU is Building Places People Love. To this end, New Urbanists have employed a variety of tools, but the one that’s rarely heard is the role beauty plays the built environment. Why is one of the most commonly used words in the English language not mentioned in the Charter for the...Read more

  • Linear park alleviates social and environmental ills

    Bulevar de Oriente converts a former sewage way into an exceedingly elegant linear park and a model for global green corridors. Alcuadrado Arquitectos SAS + Secretaria de Vivienda social y hábitat won the 2024 CNU Grand Prize Charter Award.
    Cali, Colombia's third most populous city, includes hundreds of thousands of households living in precarious circumstances. Many lack public services, mobility infrastructure, and adequate parks and open space. To address these problems, programs aim to improve public space in marginalized...Read more