• Citywide forestry plan sets a New Urban standard

    ReLeaf Cedar Rapids is a plan to restore the Iowa city’s decimated tree canopy, with a focus on equity and placemaking. Speck & Associates and Confluence won a CNU 2023 Charter Award in the Region: Metropolis, City, and Town category.
    Note: CNU and Public Square are closed the week of June 5, following a successful CNU 31 in Charlotte. Trees are such a ubiquitous part of the urban landscape that their vital role is sometimes overlooked. Nearly every New Urbanist plan makes prominent use of them, and yet the word “tree” does not...Read more

  • What if the Empire State Building met typical parking requirements?

    Under typical office parking requirements of a conservative 3 spaces per 1,000 square feet of floor area, it would require 56 acres or 15 New York City blocks to serve the Empire State Building if the parking were provided in surface lots. Completed in 1931, in the pre-parking urbanism era, the...Read more

  • Integrating new and historic in affordable housing

    Larkin Place in Elgin, Illinois, is the adaptive reuse of a historic orphanage, on a block with affordable missing middle housing. Full Circle Development and Cordogan Clark won a CNU 2023 Charter Award in the Block, Street, and Building category.
    Larkin Place in Elgin, Illinois, consists of new multifamily buildings—designed to look like single houses—and the reuse of a historic orphanage into apartments and community space. This $13 million, 3.5-acre, 48-unit development is served by bus transit, near urban retail and services, across the...Read more

  • Nation seeks higher ground with New Urbanism

    The Higher Ground Initiative in Nauru is a plan for a Pacific island nation that is threatened by sea level rise. Metrocology and CIVIC/URBAN won a Merit Award in The Region: Metropolis, City, and Town category of the 2023 Charter Awards.
    The stakes could not be higher for The Republic of Nauru, an eight-square-mile island nation of 12,500 people in the central Pacific Ocean. The island rises 65 meters (213 feet) above sea level, its majority indigenous inhabitants descending from a 3000-year-old Micronesian culture. Much of the...Read more