• New Urbanism from the air in Montgomery

    Traditional neighborhood developments at the Alabama state capital took sharply different turns after the Great Recession.
    It’s been more than a decade since I visited Montgomery, Alabama, a mid-sized state capital that also has a fair amount of New Urbanism. That includes infill development around downtown based on a new urban plan and code , and also substantial traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs)—The Waters...Read more

  • New urban plan focuses on healthy living, affordability

    The City of Las Cruces is planning an "aspirational" Transect-based neighborhood that includes modular housing on a publicly owned site.
    The City of Las Cruces, New Mexico, is planning a major new urban neighborhood on 150 acres of city owned land about three miles east of downtown. The East Lohman Development Plan calls for nearly 1,000 residential units, with an emphasis on affordable housing. The plan includes a new transit...Read more

  • A new urbanist visits YIMBYtown

    YIMBYtown is a movement, functionally adjacent to CNU, that focuses on how to build more housing in urban places. YIMBY and CNU have complementary roles in urbanism.
    Imagine a parallel universe where something like CNU exists, but it was not founded by architects, and attracts relatively few architects, urban designers, or planners. YIMBYtowners have embraced much of the new urbanist canon, and, like CNU, seem to dominate the discourse—but each struggles to...Read more

  • Turning a neglected site into four-sided mixed-use

    A development in Edina, a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis, hits a lot of metrics of sustainable planning. Nolan Mains was built on a 2.8-acre site that was previously nearly 100 percent impervious surface—mainly surface parking lots—in a commercial district. Completed in 2019, Nolan Mains has 100...Read more