• Public housing at the heart of neighborhood revival

    In a half century, a neighborhood was cleared for public housing towers. Then the failing towers gave way to a new neighborhood.
    The Hawthorne neighborhood in Philadelphia has come back to life—catalyzed by Martin Luther King Plaza, the redevelopment of a former high-rise public housing project. Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron remembers Hawthorne as a "notorious, crime-ridden area," that is today a...Read more

  • Transforming a ‘small town lost in time’

    A suburb shows how to grow while building the core in a way that adds to the character of place.
    Until 2000, Woodstock, Georgia, was a small town with a population of about 10,000—but encroaching Atlanta sprawl threatened to engulf the community in cookie-cutter projects. The town needed a way to preserve and enhance its main street character. The 32-acre Woodstock Downtown has created an...Read more

  • The next great urban reset

    Sometime this century—perhaps in the next decade—America will be physically repurposed in a new urban form that is different from sprawl or 19th Century gridded towns. Is CNU ready to lead when that happens?
    Note: A session on the next "great urban reset" will be held at CNU 26.Savannah on Thursday, May 17. Urban resets are pretty rare in history but once in a century or two they appear. When the old system finally implodes, ideas lurking under the previous system are finally able to rise to the top to...Read more

  • Affordable housing through philanthropy

    Transit-oriented project provides housing for public employees next to public housing in buildings inspired by the District's successful vernacular patterns.
    On the East bank of the Anacostia River, just a few miles from the US Capitol, Pollin Memorial brings a historically sensitive approach to affordable development in Washington, DC. Serving one of the country’s most challenged urban neighborhoods, the project has provided 83 for-sale townhouses to...Read more