• History informs a response to the housing crisis

    River City Rising shows how Spokane draws on its streetcar neighborhood origins to address its current housing problems.
    Like many cities across the US, Spokane is struggling with a lack of housing affordability. Housing costs have sharply risen in the last decade, as the city has rapidly grown. People are moving from other parts of the country to enjoy Spokane’s rich history connected to a beautiful natural...Read more

  • Exposing the pseudoscience of traffic engineering

    Wes Marshall’s new book, Killed by a Traffic Engineer, reveals the profession’s shaky, unscientific foundations—and points the way to safer, healthier streets.
    Profound frustration with traffic engineering has bedeviled New Urbanism since the movement formed in the early 1990s. Of all of the barriers to building good urbanism, two stand out: land-use codes and street planning and design. While code reform has steadily advanced, changes to street practice...Read more

  • Thinking globally, building locally

    A gathering in Italy will join new urbanists with international allies to explore and learn from great urbanism past and present.
    Cortona, Italy, may seem idyllic, but it faces many of the same challenges as other towns and rural regions in other countries: the need to provide viable economic opportunities, especially for young people; the need to build a healthy and resilient urbanism in the face of growing climate threats;...Read more

  • Beauty is essential for sustainable cities

    Modern science explains the role of beauty in creating places that can save the planet. Fortunately, beautiful places are within our power to design and build.
    The motto of the CNU is Building Places People Love. To this end, New Urbanists have employed a variety of tools, but the one that’s rarely heard is the role beauty plays the built environment. Why is one of the most commonly used words in the English language not mentioned in the Charter for the...Read more