• 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

  • How can we accelerate local code reform? Act more like the Tortoise, less like the Hare

    The goal of CNU's Project for Code Reform is to bring coding innovations to 42,000 units of local government to enable complete communities.
    Across the country, many small and mid-sized cities and towns are looking for ways to foster greater Main Street and downtown development, redevelopment, and revitalization. One barrier to these efforts is local codes and ordinances, which are the very DNA of what makes—or breaks—a place. Zoning,...Read more

  • The urban anxieties of Richard Florida

    Grass-roots revitalization is taking place in many American cities, an antidote to the "winner takes all urbanism" described in The New Urban Crisis.
    When Richard Florida burst onto the North American scene nearly 20 years ago, he did so with a sunny urban vision. His breakthrough book, The Rise of the Creative Class , asserted that a growing class of knowledge workers, techies, artists, and other creative people was gravitating toward city...Read more

  • Great idea: The rural-to-urban Transect

    The New Urbanism brought the environmental transect methodology into planning and development of human-scale, complete communities. Now the human habitat can be analyzed as a continuum with the natural world.
    In celebration of the upcoming CNU 25.Seattle , 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...Read more