• Seeing empty homes as an asset, not a liability

    Note: Hank Dittmar was a beloved part of CNU and a leader in urban planning, advocacy, and policy. As CEO Lynn Richards expressed, ‘Hank's writing is smart without being elitist, witty and poetic, succinct and often surprising.’ Hank's legacy now lives on in his writing of a new book published by...Read more

  • A brief history of retail and mixed-use

    From the decimation of downtowns to the “retail apocalypse,” massively changing retail has been the norm for the last seven decades. Urban retail may benefit from the current transformation.
    This is one of a series of ongoing Public Square articles on the market, technological, and cultural transformation of the $5 trillion retail industry—and how it relates to a continued shift toward walkable, urban living. In the beginning, we built beautiful main streets and downtowns, and we all...Read more

  • Amphitheaters spark and sustain downtown vitality

    From Ancient Rome to modern America, amphitheaters are a superb facility to gather communities together.
    As an urban planner, I tend to mentally dissect and evaluate every community I visit or live in—either consciously or subconsciously. What makes this community work? How could it be improved? What draws me in? On a recent trip to Italy where there is so much beauty and history, I found myself lost...Read more

  • ‘Missing middle’ neighborhood opens

    Prairie Queen is a re-imagining of a suburban apartment complex in the form of a walkable neighborhood.
    Perhaps the nation’s first exclusively “missing middle” housing neighborhood, the 50-acre Prairie Queen in Papillion, Nebraska—near Omaha—completed its first phase in June. Prairie Queen is a re-imagining of a suburban apartment complex in the form of a walkable neighborhood. The concept, designed...Read more