• CNU releases Freeways Without Futures 2025

    The report highlights bad freeway planning decisions and how damaged cities can be healed.
    CNU just released its ninth biennial Freeways Without Futures report. Since 2008, CNU has presented a list of highways through cities that we and others think would be better unbuilt. The report has spearheaded our efforts to draw attention to the damage caused by in-city freeways and the...Read more

  • The most housing-forward planning framework in Canada

    Growing Together in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada, employs robust public engagement to accommodate a half-century of growth around transit stations. The City of Kitchener won a 2025 CNU Charter Award in The Region: Metropolis, City and Town category.
    Growing Together is a planning framework that introduces entirely new land uses and zones customized to Major Transit Station Areas (MTSAs) in Kitchener, a city of 256,000 in Southern Ontario, Canada. The Ion light rail system began operating in 2019, with 11 stations in the 53-square-mile...Read more

  • Modeling Missing Middle across an unaffordable region

    Cape Cod Resiliency: Missing Middle changed the perception and implementation of housing on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Union Studio Architecture & Community Design won a 2025 CNU Charter Award in The Region: Metropolis, City and Town category.
    Cape Cod, with its iconic New England character and over 500 miles of coastline, faces a housing crisis that threatens year-round residents who provide the workforce to keep the economy going. Since 2000, many year-round houses have been converted to second homes for vacationers. Cape Cod workers,...Read more

  • Mapping the culture and retrofit of a car-oriented community

    A Framework Plan for Cherokee Village envisions retrofitting a partially built 20th-century new town. University of Arkansas Community Design Center won a Merit Award in The Region: Metropolis, City and Town category of the 2025 CNU Charter Awards.
    Cherokee Village is a mid-20th-Century planned new town that failed to reach its full potential. After 70 years, only 20 percent of the lots are built, housing a population of about 5,000 people. It was planned for 60,000 people, served by nearly 300 miles of roads over 21 square miles of northern...Read more