• A small city rebuilds downtown with a focus on urbanism

    Hammond Downtown Master Plan has enabled the Northwest Indiana city to kick start its downtown revival. Speck & Associates and Stantec’s Urban Places won a Merit Award in the Neighborhood, District, and Corridor category of the CNU 2023 Charter Awards.
    Based on the past sixty years, one would expect Hammond, Indiana, to continue shrinking and its downtown to stagnate indefinitely. But the suburb of Chicago has other factors in its favor, according to Jeff Speck, who led the design team for a recent Downtown Master Plan . A commuter rail station...Read more

  • Three zoning reforms for compact housing

    A beautifully illustrated article on the Placemakers website offers ideas on compact living, based on case studies of “missing middle” housing types in a village in Wales. Author Susan Henderson, an urban designer and coding expert who is based in New Mexico, relates lessons learned to housing...Read more

  • From failed mall to downtown core, a city takes charge

    Downtown Westminster in Westminster, Colorado, is the redevelopment of a former mall into a walkable center, led by the city. Torti Gallas + Partners won a Merit Award in the Neighborhood, District, and Corridor category of the 2023 CNU Charter Awards.
    A large number of malls are dying nationwide—but in most cases, a city or town just lets a developer or investor determine the fate of a property, if there is a market for reusing the site. That’s not what city leaders in Westminster, Colorado, did when the 40-year-old Westminster Mall declined in...Read more

  • Piloting a new urban quarter in an African city

    Goha Sefer—The New Urban Quarter in Gondar, Ethiopia, is a 50-acre neighborhood plan in the historic African city. Metaya Tilahun of Notre Dame won a Student Merit Award in the Neighborhood, District, and Corridor category of CNU's 2023 Charter Awards.
    The northwest Ethiopian city of Gondar was a major center of trade from the 1600s to the 1800s, when it was home to emperors. The center of government and business historically drew the finest builders and craftsmen , who constructed a city of traditional urbanism around the royal compound. But all...Read more