• Great idea: Form-based codes

    New urban codes have allowed cities and towns to code for complete neighborhoods and public spaces as shared-use places.
    In celebration of the CNU 25 , Public Square is running the series 25 Great Ideas of the New Urbanism. These ideas have been shaped by new urbanists and continue to influence cities, towns, and suburbs. The series is meant to inspire and challenge those working toward complete communities in the...Read more

  • Charter Awards focus on renovation, revitalization

    Many winners this year show how history and old buildings lead to richer neighborhoods and communities.
    In a year when the president and CEO of the National Trust for Historic Preservation gave a keynote address, the Congress for the New Urbanism lauded many development and planning projects that focused on preservation and revitalization of historic buildings and neighborhoods. The Grand Prize...Read more

  • Why new urbanism is the answer all over again

    The ground-up movement which helped defeat urban decay in the 1980s is just as relevant now our cities face the opposite problem.
    This week in Seattle the members of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) gather in Seattle on the 25th anniversary of their first meeting in Alexandria, Virginia. The congress burst on to the scene in the early nineties, after a period when cities were excoriated as unsafe, and perhaps in...Read more

  • Is placemaking a 'new environmentalism?'

    If our approach to environmentalism should be "new," so too should our approach to urbanism.
    Can placemaking – in short, the building or strengthening of physical community fabric to create great human habitat – be a “new environmentalism”? The question is posed by a provocative short essay , which I first discovered in 2011. Written by Ethan Kent of the Project for Public Spaces, the...Read more