Thank you for your membership with CNU, the essential driver of the New Urbanist movement. We are the only nonprofit that:
- Represents a multidisciplinary member base
- Provides national range and locally-informed Impact
- Shares principles in values-based New Urbanist practice
- Connects policy and design in making change on the ground
- Empowers out membership in collaboration and aggregation
CNU members have been the strength of this organization from the start. For over 30 years, together we have collaborated, innovated, pushed boundaries (and each other) to further the practice of new urbanism in service of or walkable, sustainable, and equity-supportive places. CNU is dedicated to making the design of cities, towns, and neighborhoods a part of how we respond to complex societal challenges, realizing their full potential to expand the social, economic, and environmental opportunities available to all members of each community.
We are so glad to have you with us.
Over the next three years, CNU will be working across geographical locations, physical place types, professional disciplines, and urban systems in order to address the critical issues that cities, towns, and neighborhoods are facing. Our members are a crucial part of this work. Together, we will achieve the outcomes set forth in our 2024 Strategic Plan Update: Reforming Detrimental Regulations, Equalize Access to Affordable Urbanism, and Respond to a Rapidly Changing Climate.
Questions, comments, or feedback? I would love to hear from you.
- Scott Shields, Director of Membership & Outreach
Your Member Benefits
Connection: Real Places is our monthly newsletter connecting New Urbanists around the world. Each issue contains spotlights of members and their work, upcoming events and opportunities happening near you, a roundup of work being done by CNU staff, and a snapshot of New Urbanism in the News including highlights from Public Square: A CNU Journal.
Access: CNU members represent a diverse, international group of practitioners from a number of disciplines. Your membership provides the opportunity to access (and be listed in) our Member Database.
Education: Our annual event - called a Congress - has long been CNU’s largest and most significant program, and our prime opportunity to further the practice of New Urbanism by convening to discuss, debate, and learn from one another. Your membership provides discounted access to registration and member-only events each year. The Congress is unique among conferences or gatherings in the following ways:
- Context Matters. We move the location of our Congress every year not just so our attendees can see new things. We encourage our attendees to examine and learn from new cities and regions; to see the unique ways in which advocates and practitioners in the local host city have faced issues; and identify commonalities that can inspire change in our attendees’ practice, and to look with fresh eyes onto local problem-solving opportunities.
- Collaboration in a Problem Space. We develop a Focus, or problem space, that highlights an issue or topic in the local context that could benefit from the brain power of hundreds of New Urbanist practitioners across disciplines. The Focus allows the Congress to bring a question, or set of issues, to the forefront of the content - providing education and collaboration that helps evolve the collective practice of New Urbanism.
- Multidisciplinary Perspectives. The annual Congress is one of the only professional gatherings that cuts across disciplines - our attendees include planners and urban designers, architects and landscape architects, traffic and building engineers, developers and real estate professionals, academics and researchers, and those with expertise in market or research analysis. The opportunity to rub shoulders with someone from a discipline outside your own - and markedly change the way you practice - is unique to CNU’s Congress.
- Integration of Design and Policy. A foundational aspect of New Urbanist practice is in understanding the integration and intersection of design and policy. Good yet siloed design lacks the power to provide the environmental, economic, and social benefits that are otherwise possible. Design must be integrated with policy interventions to be able to genuinely deliver walkable, sustainable, and more equity-supportive urbanism.
Learn More about CNU
In addition to delivering the annual Congress, CNU convenes, collaborates, and educates the broader movement of new urbanists through a number of programmatic efforts and projects. Here are a few things to check out to get to know CNU better:
- CNU's talented and dedicated staff represent a wide array of professional experiences and personal backgrounds. Get to know them, their stories, and their contribution to CNU.
- Our organization is supported by a similarly diverse and passionate Board of Directors, which includes appointed members and positions that are elected by our Chapter network and membership-at-large. CNU Board members represent practitioners in the fields of design, planning, and policy as well as those with backgrounds in philanthropy, development, and nonprofit management.
- Our 2024 Strategic Plan Update, approved by the Board in January, guides all that we do. It builds on the previously-approved 2020 plan and is informed by engagement with our members, partners, affiliate organizations, and allies.
CNU's programmatic initiatives and projects have had a measurable impact. Here are just a few:
- Legacy Projects: This annual program provides the opportunity to leverage the power of CNU’s membership and the principles of New Urbanism to impact real projects and communities in the city or region that is hosting our annual Congress. Each project is a pro-bono neighborhood design workshop designed to tackle a specific issue in a community, with short-term steps for implementation that serve as a catalyst for future work. Since its inception nine years ago, we have completed 25 Legacy Projects in 9 different metro areas. Interested in working on one as a member firm? Contact us.
- Reforming Codes and Regulations: CNU and its members have been on the forefront of reforming the regulatory regime that shapes the way we can build, grow, and thrive in our cities and towns. From the evolution and popularization of form-based codes that put deliver a high-quality public realm, to our Project for Code Reform that reccommended specific, incremental changes that state and local governments can make to start immediately improving their buildings and streets, CNU has had improved countless regulations.
- Envisioning Communities without Highways: In the 20th Century, the American era of highway-building created sprawling freeways that cut huge swaths through our cities. Too often vibrant, diverse, and functioning neighborhoods were destroyed or isolated by their construction, devastating communities and economies alike. There is so much work to do to continue to repair these harms, including advocating for the the removal of existing freeways, providing design solutions to re-knit and re-connect the street grid, and ensuring that funding is directed to the communities who need it most. Our bi-annual Freeways Without Futures report, the Freeway Fighters Network, and our Highways to Boulevards program all informed the development of the $4B Reconnecting Communities program.
- Educating and Expanding New Urbanist Practice: In addition to the education provided through our annual Congress, CNU provides a number of CEUs through webinars and is working to expand the opportunities we provide for training.
Get Connected:
Chapters: CNU Chapters provide a local framework to collaborate on building more great places for everyone. Chapters gather local leaders, like-minded organizations, and practitioners looking for peer networking, professional development, and strategies and tools for their communities. Chapters engage in a wide range of activities, from hosting talks and monthly happy hours to sponsoring film festivals, symposiums, and design charrettes, as well as critiquing new or proposed development.
Public Square: A CNU Journal provides project profiles, insights on innovations and trends, and a deep connection to the movement's past and future. Fully supported by membership dues, Public Square accepts ideas for articles and is a great opportunity to connect with our large and knowledgeable audience.
On the Park Bench: This webinar series presents interactive conversations with thought leaders in our multidisciplinary movement and allied industries, providing an opportunity for the audience to engage in real time. If you have a topic or speaker in mind, this webinar series is a great way to further connect with fellow New Urbanists.
CNU-Accreditation: CNU-Accreditation is achieved through the successful completion of the CNU-A online exam, administered by the University of Miami School of Architecture and maintenance of an urbanist membership. As a member, you are already part way to becoming CNU-A member. The program is based on the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism and aims to spread and elevate our best practices; recognize the talent and commitment on display within the movement to create walkable, sustainable places; and establish New Urbanism as the standard for leaders working to build better places.
Deepen Your Understanding of New Urbanism
The practice of New Urbanism developed in the 1990s in reaction to the proliferation of suburban sprawl, led by a group of architects and designers who knew the built environment was capable of offering more social, economic, and environmental benefits than the prevailing real estate development patterns could provide. Built on the 27 principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism, New Urbanism is more than a set of design guidelines or policy recommendations. It is an intersectional way of practicing urbanism - of building community - that requires policy, design, and development to all play a role in achieving a vision for the future in which intentional design improves the lives of all people.
Our 25 Great Ideas of New Urbanism offers a panoramic view of the contributions of New Urbanism made over the first 25 years to the practices of planning, design, architecture, and community activism.
The Charter is complemented by the Canons of Sustainable Architecture and Urbanism, which were developed in 2009 to serve as a set of operating principles for human settlement that reestablish the relationship between the art of building, the making of community, and the conservation of our natural world.
Looking for more reading materials? There are a number of books in our ever-growing list that you can check out here.
