• A call to rethink dying houses of worship

    The US may see 100,000 churches close, and this issue could help determine the success or failure of many downtowns and neighborhoods over the next three to four decades. The skills of urbanists are needed.
    Rome, Georgia, features steeple after steeple defining its skyline. Its tourist map for Rome depicts 15 houses of worship in its six-block long, four-block-wide Downtown area alone. The church properties take up a substantial portion of developable land downtown. Like cities nationwide, most of...Read more

  • Micro-heroicism, Tulsa, and the DNA of CNU

    New urbanists need to recharge their commitment to a "micro-heroic" remapping of mid-century America—where immigrants, workers, and minorities now struggle to build sustainable communities.
    Editor's note: CNU and Yard & Company partnered with the Global District, a nonprofit affiliate with Main Street America, to create a Tactical Urbanism project and plan for Tulsa’s Global District , a center of international culture and business. The project is part of CNU’s commitment to leave...Read more

  • Buffalo suburb moves ahead with retrofit plans

    Amherst, New York, is a municipality to watch for those who are tracking suburban retrofit—the idea of re-purposing automobile-oriented suburban areas for new uses in the 21 st Century. Amherst is the largest suburb in the Buffalo region, and home to the north campus of the University of Buffalo...Read more

  • The remarkable potential for retrofitting strip malls

    Redeveloping the most favorable 10 percent of suburban strip malls in the Boston region would meet a major portion of the area’s housing needs in the next decade, according to a study.
    An analysis of the Boston region showed that retrofitting just 10 percent of strip malls could provide 125,000 housing units—boosting local annual net tax revenues by $481 million. Retrofit would avert an estimated 10 square miles of impervious surface and 400,000 metric tons of carbon emissions...Read more