• A tool for better zoning in Wisconsin

    CNU’s Project for Code Reform completed a report for Wisconsin municipalities, Enabling Better Places, building on similar reports for Michigan and Vermont, and one upcoming in New Hampshire.
    The League of Wisconsin Municipalities worked with CNU and a range of statewide organizations to produce Enabling Better Places: A User’s Guide to Wisconsin Neighborhood Affordability . The goal is to help the state’s more than 1,800 cities, towns, and villages revise their zoning codes to promote...Read more

  • Introducing … The Freeway Fighters Network

    The CNU-supported network tracks more than 60 local freeway fighting efforts, coordinates collective action, and supports a shift toward multimodal transportation systems.
    Early in the Interstate era, an initial cadre of freeway fighters contested the misleading narrative of progress so often associated with highway building, especially in cities. Citizen-led groups like the Movement Against Destruction, the Emergency Committee on the Transportation Crisis, and...Read more

  • Periodic Table of Urbanism

    At CNU 30 in Oklahoma City planner Stephen Goldie presented an idea that has been in the works for several years, building on the rural-to-urban Transect. Goldie calls it the “Periodic Table of Urbanism,” see image at top, because it resembles the periodic table of chemistry. The idea is...Read more

  • A new era of downtown opportunity

    Despite the pandemic's devastating impact on the office market, downtowns and nearby walkable neighborhoods are looking forward to two decades of growth driven by demographic and economic change.
    Over the past two years I have heard colleagues express growing pessimism about the future of North America’s downtowns. And why not? In its April 2021 report, “To Recover From COVID-19, Downtowns Must Adapt”, Brookings noted “Across the U.S., the pandemic has left downtowns ‘ cratered ,’ ‘...Read more