• Complete Streets policy designed for implementation

    With CNU’s technical help, Evansville adopted a Complete Streets ordinance that includes tight deadlines and metrics so staff can make a difference.
    The City of Evansville, Indiana, recently adopted an exceptional Complete Streets policy with the help of a CNU code audit and the support of AARP and other organizations. Complete Streets policies have been adopted by more than 1,600 jurisdictions nationwide since 2000. Such laws have tended to be...Read more

  • In praise of ‘boxy buildings’

    Five- to seven-story podium buildings are dense, mixed-use, affordable, and easily replicable. It's time to recognize a good thing and learn from the better examples.
    Despite ongoing lamentations and protestations to the contrary (just search; “boxy buildings”), this essay is an ode to a building type that owes its existence to the marriage of a structural system, a building code limitation, and a recognized value proposition that have resulted in the making of...Read more

  • The infrastructure bill’s promise for cities

    To federal government this week adopted a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act ), which is going to pay for a lot of machines moving dirt over the next few years. To what extent will they make better cities? Streets, transit, and other infrastructure...Read more

  • Community design answer to homelessness

    An architect makes the case for little cottages, grouped in a village form, as a way to address homelessness.
    Every once in a while, a book comes across my desk that is elegant and simple, addressing a single issue with clarity. That’s A Solution to Homelessness in Your Town : Valley View Senior Housing, Napa County, California , by architect Charles Durrett, with Jinglin Yang, an architectural designer...Read more