• What's YIMBYism? Here's five characteristics

    The Yes in My Back Yard movement pulls from a broad spectrum of people concerned about many aspects of urban places, including affordable housing, mobility, and good urbanism.
    Editor’s note: YIMBY (yes in my backyard) is an phrase and movement that was coined in 2006 in Toronto and spread to many North American cities in recent years in response to high housing costs and what is often reflexive opposition to infill housing. This blog post was originally sent as an email...Read more

  • Town center links USC and South LA

    University builds a transformative development in an area that hasn't seen much investment in recent decades.
    The New York Times calls USC Village, which opened in 2017, "an ambitious test of a public-private partnership hoping to remake a historically underserved neighborhood." The $700 million project designed by Harley Ellis Devereaux creates housing for 2,500 University of Southern California students...Read more

  • A small ‘c’ conservative case for urbanism

    Brainerd, Minnesota, Lafayette, Louisiana, and place called Jimmy's Pizza highlight the advantages of incremental design and development—and show why car-oriented development turns out to be a very poor investment.
    Note: This article is a summary of talk given by Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns at an event that CNU co-sponsored a while back with The American Conservative . View the whole talk here. No society in history has ever done what we have done: taken thousands of years of history and knowledge about how...Read more

  • Catalytic development for walkable urban places

    Catalytic development takes place where strategic, integrated investments are made in a concentrated, walkable urban area.
    Why did Dan Gilbert invest billions in downtown Detroit and stake his home-loan empire on a city going through bankruptcy? Financial experts would caution against such a move—but it appears to be paying off as Gilbert buys more and more property and announces ever larger deals. Gilbert’s Rock...Read more