• 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

  • Transit-oriented model for economic development in the suburbs

    The Blue Line Corridor sets the stage for substantial transit-oriented suburban retrofit in a growing region. HR&A Advisors and Design Collective won a Merit Award in The Region: Metropolis, City, and Town category of CNU's 2022 Charter Awards.
    Note: Public Square editor Robert Steuteville is on leave from late September through the last week of October, 2022. In the meantime, we are offering some popular articles from 2022 in addition to new content. Economic development goals in Prince George’s County, Maryland—the largest predominantly...Read more

  • Tackling concentrated poverty, without displacement

    Westside Evolves is a master plan to deal with the 20th Century model of public housing in Chattanooga, Tennessee. EJP Consulting Group won a Merit Award in the Emerging Project category of CNU's 2022 Charter Awards.
    Chattanooga is launching a highly ambitious plan to transform Westside, an impoverished neighborhood with the highest concentration of public housing in the city. Westside Evolves tackles the challenge of concentrated poverty, while ensuring little or no displacement, through a $680 million, 10-...Read more

  • New Urbanism in the New Urban Agenda: Threads of an unfinished (global) reformation

    The two charters represent a “paradigm shift” in the shaping of cities and towns, away from machinery and machine thinking, and back towards people. A May conference in Paris will explore them both.
    In 1922—a century ago this year—a young Swiss architect named Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier, made a radical proposal for the restructuring of Paris and other cities. His utopian plan for a “Ville Contemporaine” (contemporary city) featured wide streets dedicated to...Read more