• Applying the CNU Charter to large redevelopments

    The Minnesota capital has major redevelopments underway, using principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism.
    Saint Paul, Minnesota, is using principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism to design and develop two of the city’s most significant, large-scale projects of the coming decade. Planners at CNU 28.A Virtual Gathering discussed ongoing redevelopment of the 122-acre former Ford factory site in the...Read more

  • Urban design pioneer David Lewis dies at 98

    A CNU Athena Medal winner in 2007, David Lewis died last week at the age of 98. Lewis founded Urban Design Associates (UDA) in Pittsburgh with former student Ray Gindroz in 1964, a firm that pioneered concepts that later became known as New Urbanism. “If Jane Jacobs helped us to understand the...Read more

  • Eight incremental development policies to help bridge the wealth gap

    Using vacant parcels in a in a predominantly African American neighborhood in Northwest Detroit as a testing ground, a University of Michigan team modeled a development process that could support local residents as small-scale, novice developers.
    One of the more pernicious forms of racial inequality in this country is the wealth gap between white and Black Americans. Income gaps aside, disparities in wealth are even starker, and worsening. Between 1983 and 2013, median Black household wealth decreased by 75 percent to $1,700 while median...Read more

  • Equity, race, and placemaking: Reimagining how business improvement districts use their power

    BIDs will be essential actors in picking up the pieces of COVID-ravaged urban economies, but the BID model, like all economic development tools, must adapt to fuel inclusive 21st Century places.
    Three months of Zoom calls have taught us that every city planner in the country has a copy of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker prominently displayed on his or her bookshelf. Let’s remind ourselves that Robert Moses—the mid-20 th Century New York master builder who is the subject of Caro’s epic...Read more