• Making lemonade out of lemons: A case for zoning reform

    CNU’s Project for Code Reform is filling a need for incremental code reform and furthering statewide programs to remove barriers to inclusive communities.
    Have you ever looked closely at a city or town and wondered why it looks the way it does? Why do different neighborhoods within a city or town have distinct character? Why do buildings not exceed a certain height? If you’re a New Urbanist, chances are you’ve asked yourself these types of questions...Read more

  • The chameleon of urban architecture

    “Ambiguous and composite buildings” solve multiple urban design problems through a flexible approach to building form and architectural language.
    In the Excursus appended to the end of the influential 1978 book Collage City , Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter include what they call “an abridged list of stimulants … as possible Object Trouves in the urbanistic collage.” One of these found objects is the idea of a building type they called Ambiguous...Read more

  • When bad things happen in new urban places

    New Urbanist places sometimes get the reputation of looking like movie sets , especially some of the well-known developments like Celebration (built by Disney), and Seaside, which did serve as a set for the 1998 film The Truman Show (the filmmakers built fake buildings and landscaping to complement...Read more

  • Let main streets be main streets

    A community should determine what kind of community it wants to be, not unelected DOT engineers.
    Before moving to Ithaca, New York, more than 20 years ago, I lived on Main Street in the town of Emmaus, Pennsylvania. Cars would go by at 40 mph, sometimes 50 mph late at night. On-street parking buffered pedestrians from the fast-moving traffic, but crossing the street was uncomfortable. Few...Read more