• Learning from Manhattan’s urban imperfections

    New York is a great city that breaks many rules of urban planning. Here's what its imperfections can teach us about city building.
    “New York is the perfect model of a city, not the model of a perfect city,” Lewis Mumford, 1979.​ The above quote is featured on a wall in the Museum of the City of New York, which I visited on a recent trip to our most unequivocally urban city. Later, as I walked down 5 th Avenue, Mumford’s keen...Read more

  • Can an electric bicycle take the place of a car?

    Not if you can't use it for shopping—and that's why protected bike lanes are one key to reducing carbon emissions.
    These days I’m riding an electric bike. I didn’t intend to. I believed that a decarbonized future would be ushered in by electric cars. I bought one. I wanted one that I could throw a bicycle in the back. The car was expensive, even with the tax incentives. But boy was it quiet! And the...Read more

  • Retreats, eco-villages, and walkable communities

    A retreat is often used in real estate marketing to describe anything from a gated suburban resort subdivision to enclaves and eco-villages. Ideally, a new urbanist neo-traditional version includes the same fundamental principles of villages and neighborhoods in towns and cities—walkability,...Read more

  • Placemaking is going places: 20 years of transportation-related award winners

    From transit-oriented development to Tactical Urbanism, transportation themes have resounded through the first two decades of the CNU Charter Awards.
    The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) Charter Awards, which highlight the best in urban design in the United States and around the world, have celebrated good interdisciplinary design since 2001. As the Charter Awards head into their 20th year, a reflection on some of our past awards shows how...Read more