• New beach town is a model for regional growth

    Seabrook, Washington, has created a model for Transect-based town design in an economically challenged region. Seabrook Land Company and Qamar & Associates won the 2026 Charter Award Grand Prize in the Neighborhood, District, and Corridor category.
    Seabrook, Washington, a much-admired new beach town with a traffic-calmed coastal road running through it, has now received the highest prize for a New Urbanist project. The 588-acre town perches on three promontories overlooking the Pacific Ocean, safe from tsunamis or the potential impacts of...Read more

  • Meet the 2026 Charter Awards winners

    15 winning projects embody and advance the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism for the 26th year.
    Each year since 2001, the CNU Charter Awards have celebrated the best current work in New Urbanism from around the world. Winning projects highlight exemplary efforts put forth by local governments, developers, lenders, architects, urban designers, community activists, and others engaged in...Read more

  • Your city legalized triplexes. The building code said no

    To build more affordable 'missing middle' housing, changing zoning laws is not enough. We need small multifamily buildings to be regulated under the residential code.
    The urbanist movement has won real fights on zoning, parking, and single-stair reform. But there’s a bottleneck that doesn’t get enough attention: the building code draws a hard line between two dwelling units and three. Once you cross that line, you leave the International Residential Code and...Read more

  • Why single-stair reform leads to more livable, adaptable infill

    Allowing more single-stair buildings in the US will positively affect quality of life, public health, infill flexibility, family-friendly units, costs, and even climate adaptation.
    The way we design and build multifamily housing in the US is an anomaly. The typical US multifamily building is a double-loaded corridor—a building with a corridor down the middle and units on either side. This means our multifamily housing is designed and built like a hotel or dormitory. In most...Read more