• Stretching the imagination of a community’s highway-to-boulevard dreams

    IMAGINE: The Future Grand Rapids vision replaces US-131 in the Michigan city with a green, low speed boulevard and reconnected street grid.
    When people are forced to live for generations with destructive infrastructure, like an urban highway, they tend to restructure their lives to accommodate it and “work around it,” making it difficult to imagine that any other alternative will work. IMAGINE: The Future Grand Rapids is building a...Read more

  • The Art of the New Urbanism

    Fine art helped to drive the New Urbanism trend toward walkable communities.
    A coming book on the New Urbanism that will blow a lot of socks off. The Art of the New Urbanism Volume 1, highlights an aspect of the movement that is long overdue for examination: The works of the talented artists who have drawn renderings and plans for countless projects. Explains co-author...Read more

  • Discover Providence: A hidden gem of Hollywood’s East Coast

    Even if you have never been to the Rhode Island city that is hosting CNU33, you are familiar with its streets and culture as a film and TV backdrop.
    Nestled in the heart of New England, Providence, Rhode Island, may not come to mind when you think of film and television hotspots—but it should. This charming city offers cobblestone streets and colonial architecture that have positioned it as a compelling backdrop for the entertainment industry...Read more

  • How bicycles transform 21st Century cities

    Author Dan Piatkowski explains that bicycles, especially e-bikes, are becoming a more important means of transportation and shaping cities as they grow.
    Bicycles are a 19th Century technology discounted as a serious transportation topic for much of the 20th Century—much less a means of shaping cities. I took a high school class called “The Future,” taught by one Stanley Goldfarb, and we were assigned a paper predicting some future scenario. This...Read more