• Urban center opens waterfront of major city

    The Wharf has re-established DC as a true waterfront city and added a major destination along with affordable housing. The mixed-use development won the 2020 CNU Grand Prize Charter Award.
    The Wharf is a superbly designed and impressively implemented mixed-use urban center that re-establishes DC’s connection to the water. Between the mid-1940s through the 1970s, DC’s historic waterfront was largely demolished as part of the federal government’s urban renewal program that displaced...Read more

  • Preventing displacement from a new transit line

    Connecting Crossroad explores how to preserve affordable housing while improving the public realm in Langley Park, an immigrant neighborhood in Maryland. The plan won a 2020 CNU Student Charter Award for Sara Ghafer-Samar at the University of Maryland.
    The Purple Line, a 16-mile-long, east-west light rail line under construction in the Maryland suburbs of DC, is going through the heart of Langley Park, a majority-Hispanic neighborhood in Prince George’s County, Maryland. The postwar suburb, built between 1945 and 1965, has an automobile-oriented...Read more

  • A Strategic Vision for Panama City

    After being hit by a Category 5 storm in the fall of 2018, Panama City, Florida, is following a vision to rebuild better than before. The plan won a 2020 CNU Charter Award in the Neighborhood, District, and Corridor category for Dover, Kohl & Partners.
    Just a year after being clobbered by one of the most powerful Atlantic storms every to land in the US, Panama City, Florida, adopted a vision to rebuild that focuses on economic revival of its long-neglected downtown. The Strategic Vision for Panama City, which won a CNU Charter Award this year,...Read more

  • State-of-the-art code for a walkable city

    In its new form-based code, Somerville ditches a Model T zoning engine and adopts 21st Century green design. The code won a 2020 CNU Charter Award in the Metropolis, City, and Town category for the City of Somerville.
    Somerville, Massachusetts, recently adopted a state-of-the-art form-based code that brings together much of the wisdom that urbanists have acquired over the last 30 years. Remarkably, the code was largely written by in-house city planners, who include skilled urbanists with many years of experience...Read more