• Feds release plan for compact communities to counter climate change

    The US National Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization lays out goals for practitioners of New Urbanism and smart growth “to increase convenience and reduce emissions by making it possible for people to take fewer or shorter trips.”
    Read the official CNU media release here . The US government on Tuesday released a groundbreaking Blueprint for Transportation Decarbonization that fully recognizes the critical role of compact, complete communities in reducing carbon emissions and addressing the nation’s climate issues. No federal...Read more

  • The American strip is a relic

    California’s new legislation may be the catalyst for transforming America’s dying commercial strips
    “The Strip” was once the glue holding together the American Dream’s new world of subdivisions, shopping centers, and office parks. It was the place to cruise, a new type of social space, lined with landmarks, trademarks and yes, gathering places. But no more. Today we do our cruising online and...Read more
  • A suburban neighborhood of tract housing within the city of Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States; culs-de-sac are hallmarks of suburban planning.

    Suburbia was a housing program

    We used to understand that housing construction was in the public interest
    Note: This article first appeared on The Deleted Scenes .​ Public Square editor Robert Steuteville is on leave through the last week of October. I’ve had this note sitting in my possible newsletter posts document: “Suburbia was a housing program.” I’ve alternated between thinking that was banal and...Read more

  • Visionary leadership creates new downtown

    Frisco, Texas, has been one of the fastest growing cities in the US over the last three decades, going from a small town of 6,000 in 1990 to more than 200,000 today. In the 1990s, when the city north of Dallas began to boom, officials acquired land for civic buildings like a city hall and police...Read more