• Setting a whole new pattern for rural growth

    Carlton Landing, a traditional neighborhood development that is its own municipality, is transforming a rural Oklahoma region. DPZ CoDESIGN won a Merit Award in The Region: Metropolis, City, and Town category of CNU's 2022 Charter Awards.
    Carlton Landing is the first new urban town in the US to be legally incorporated, an important milestone. The rural Oklahoma community is focused on green design and self-sufficiency—The independent mindset comes from its remote location 20 miles from the nearest Interstate, and a one-to-two-hour...Read more

  • A gridded city of 5 million people proposed for Southwest

    Tech billionaire Marc Lore hired starchitect Bjarke Ingels for a new urban design of a city that would be based upon community ownership of land.
    The architecture world is buzzing with the proposal this week for a major new metropolis with the hallmarks of new urbanist planning in the Southwestern US desert. Opinions may differ on whether this is just a utopian idea or will, in fact, be built in part or in whole. Nevertheless the plan is...Read more

  • Planning for long-term growth around community anchors

    Memphis 3.0 establishes neighborhood centers where mixed-use development may occur incrementally, at different speeds, according to the context.
    The Memphis 3.0 Comprehensive Plan was adopted in 2019 for 324 square miles and 650,000 residents, using mixed-use place types and walkable neighborhood centers to accommodate growth in a range of economic activities. Prior to the plan, Memphis drifted along for four decades approving growth on a...Read more

  • Neal Peirce, chronicler of cities and regions

    From identifying “pedestrian pockets” as a regional antidote to sprawl to advocating for the reform of the electoral college, Neal Peirce was ahead of his time.
    Neal Peirce, the person who first put me on the path to New Urbanism, died several weeks ago, just days before his 88 th birthday. Neal had an outsized impact on my life and that of many other friends and colleagues. In 1987, I received a small envelope in the mail from my mother. Inside was a...Read more