CONGRESS FOR THE NEW URBANISM
Building Place People Love
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
The Congress for the New Urbanism views disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society's built heritage as one interrelated community-building challenge.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Highways to Boulevards
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. The Highways to Boulevards movement offers a path forward for communities to repair, rebuild, and reknit. It seeks to replace aging highways that damage communities with assets like city streets, housing, and green space. These streets become places for the people who live around them, with local businesses and places for public interaction, as well as better integration with a city’s transit systems. Highways to Boulevards conversions increase access to jobs and services and allow for the creation of neighborhood-driven, well-functioning urban space.
Project for Code Reform
CNU’s Project for Code Reform seeks to streamline the code reform process by providing local governments place-specific incremental coding changes that address the most problematic barriers first, build political will, and ultimately create more walkable, prosperous, and equitable places. We do this work in a way that meets planners, mayors, and planning commissioners where they are: politically, financially, and administratively. The Project's incremental approach enables jurisdictions to set their own pace for code changes, allowing them to prioritize their coding efforts, respond to the community’s vision and needs, and facilitate greater community learning and understanding.
The Project for Code Reform recommends state and local level incremental code reform, provides training and education to local governments on alternate code methodologies including Form Based Codes, and disseminates information on coding successes and regulatory challenges.
Annual Congress
Our annual Congress is CNU’s flagship event: the premiere national event on building better places. Each year, 1,600+ attendees convene to hear from speakers, participate in workshops, collaborate on projects, and learn new strategies from leaders in dozens of fields. Outside the conference room, Congress attendees experience inspiring host cities like Louisville, Detroit, the Twin Cities, Dallas, and Buffalo, helping to place national issues in a unique and challenging local context.
Each Congress offers attendees the chance to experience and connect with an inspiring host region. Since its earliest days, the event has evolved towards greater immersion in local places, cultures, and issues—helping residents to understand the fascinating story of a unique metro region. Through scholarships, public events, and our Legacy Charrette program, the Congress also seeks to leave a legacy of understanding and a positive placemaking impact on its host city.
Legacy Projects
Each year, in conjunction with our annual Congress, CNU invites municipalities and neighborhood organizations within the Congress's host region to apply for pro-bono technical assistance from leading urban design firms. Through public engagement and collaboration, CNU’s Legacy Projects strive to demonstrate the power of great urban design beyond the boundaries of each selected community, and targeted communities experience both short-term progress and long-lasting momentum.
Legacy Projects are designed to have an immediate impact on the neighborhoods, communities, and cities served. While many neighborhood planning efforts deliver beautiful reports that require years of work that may not happen, Legacy Projects have a 6-18 month scope for implementation - delivering short and medium range recommendations that can be realized almost immediately.
Design for Climate Change
From the beginning, the Congress for the New Urbanism has been dedicated to building more resilient and equitable cities and towns. CNU’s 2017 Climate Summit reaffirmed, “we have neither the time nor the resources to tackle climate change and racial and social equity as separate challenges.”
New Urbanism emphasizes multifunctional public space that can improve public health, reduce a city's carbon footprint, encourage active lifestyles, and create places where community can form. Compact communities must be diverse, inclusive and equitable ones.
Charter Awards
The CNU Charter Awards recognize exemplary work by CNU members and their allies who design and build places people love. The winners not only embody and advance the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism, they make a difference in people's lives.
The Charter identifies three major scales of geography for design and policy purposes. The largest scale is composed of regions. The middle scale is made up of neighborhoods, districts, and corridors. The smallest scale is composed of blocks, streets, and buildings.
The Charter Awards are given to projects at each scale, with special recognition reserved for the best projects at the professional and student levels. The CNU Charter Awards, given annually since 2001, are the world's preeminent award for urban design, placemaking, and community building.
Education and Training
From CNU's program-based summits and councils to ongoing reporting and education through our "On the Park Bench" webinar series and "Public Square: A CNU Journal", CNU works to convene, educate, lead and equip New Urbanist practitioners across a wide range of sectors, professions, and geographies. CNU also provides custom training for individuals and local governments, both online and in person.
Where we work
External reviews
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
Thirty years ago, CNU made a radical declaration, recognizing disinvestment in central cities, the spread of placeless sprawl, increasing separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and the erosion of society’s built heritage as one interrelated community-building challenge.
Since then, significant work has been done to reverse the trends of land consumption and auto-orientation, improving the environmental, economic, and social health of cities and neighborhoods. Well-functioning, walkable, mixed-use developments are more popular, including small-scale and incremental development that supports neighborhoods and builds local resilience.
The challenge CNU now faces is to develop the tools that residents, neighborhood advocates, policy makers, and practitioners need to tackle the most pressing issues facing cities in the 21st century: equitable access to affordable housing and wealth creation strategies, the ability to adapt to changing climate conditions, and reinventing local policies that guide the development of walkable urbanism.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
CNU accomplishes its work by:
1. Empowering local governments to create locally-based solutions that are flexible, adaptable, and context-specific;
2. Changing policies and standards to reduce or eliminate barriers to new urbanism approaches;
3. Developing education and training to support and encourage a wider range of stakeholders and participants in the community design and development process.
4. Expanding the movement to engage a more diverse membership and tapping into new networks to amplify the impact.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
CNU’s membership consists of over 2,500 elected officials and policymakers, planners, engineers, public works officials, urban designers, architects, academics, and neighborhood advocates across the country and around the world. We engage a diverse audience working to build places people love through online and print publications, thought leadership, social media, events, and technical assistance. Examples of our audience, engagement, and outreach include:
- Our annual Congress convenes over 1,600 local, national, and international participants for four days of hands-on immersive learning. CNU provides scholarships to young and marginalized urbanists and engages local governments through special programming to increase diversity at the event and amongst the membership.
- CNU’s websites, including CNU.org, Public Square: A CNU Journal, and Build a Better Burb average 1.2M+ annual views, with reports and publications driving significant traffic. In the last year, online publications were downloaded 36K+ times.
- Our social media channels have more than 121k followers and over 8M engagements.
- CNU collaborates with groups such as AARP, Michigan Municipal League, the Institute of Transportation Engineers, state and local governments, the University of Miami, and many others to reach urbanist-minded followers and professionals.
- CNU provides expert media consultation; 2018 highlights: National Geographic, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and local NPR affiliates.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
“The early victory of the New Urbanism was in shifting the academic and professional conversation away from mass suburbanization as the only available model for the human habitat,” explain Mike Lydon and Anthony Garcia in their 2015 book, Tactical Urbanism.
2019 Accomplishments:
● Congress leveraged our collective work on the Highways to Boulevards initiative to draft S.2302 and H.R.4101, bills that promote, support, and fund highway removal and street rebuilding to increase mobility. Congress is relying on CNU to help promote them. During CNU’s Transportation Summit in October, members met with and educated more than 22 legislative offices on these bills.
● Now in its sixth year, CNU’s Legacy Projects, for which CNU members provide pro-bono technical assistance to underserved communities in the annual Congress’s host region, have maintained an implementation rate of over 90%—the highest rate in any technical assistance program.
● Our Project for Code Reform is tackling the difficult issue of accelerating local land use reform through an incremental approach. Developed at the state level, in partnership with local governments and statewide organizations, the collaborative team of CNU members and staff identifies changes that are sensitive to the capacity constraints many local governments face, meeting them where they are. Matt Lambert, CNU National Board member, says, “This programmatic work is exactly how the organization and its members should leverage each other’s strengths. Individual members cannot enact statewide change and CNU needs our code wrangling expertise.” Recent work has focused on enabling main streets and finding affordable housing solutions.
● In May, we released Building Local Strength: Emerging Strategies for Inclusive Development, which highlights eight case studies and a roster of tactics that can be used to strengthen existing communities in their efforts to minimize displacement and increase access to opportunities. CNU members were essential to many of the case studies and all of the tools.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
CONGRESS FOR THE NEW URBANISM
Board of directorsas of 03/08/2023
Susan Henderson
PlaceMakers
Larry Gould
Nelson Nygaard
Susan Henderson
PlaceMakers
Emily Talen
University of Chicago
Matthew Lambert
DPZ CoDESIGN
Frank Starkey
People Places, LLC
Gary Scott
Pace Suburban Bus
Jocelyn Gibson
ZoneCo
Mitchell J. Silver
McAdams
Ashleigh Walton
Urban Design Associates
Rob Parker
Trilith Development
Marques King
Fabric[K] Design
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
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