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June 28, 2016 | 2:51 am

CNU24 Detroit: Summary and celebration

You know how the sweet spot for blogs is 500 words? Well, this isn’t one of those. It’s the geek’s guide to the 24th Congress for the New Urbanism in Detroit. Feeling grateful for the food for thought, and wanting to keep the ideas fresh. This blog compiles city planning tweets from June 8 through 11 on the subject, grouping the ideas into categories of Community, Equity, Lean Urbanism, Transportation, Infrastructure, Suburban Retrofit, and Architecture, along with inspiration from Detroit and Charleston.

Here’s a shout out to all the Twitter-using urbanists in Detroit who used the hashtag #CNU24 to share this wealth of ideas, and I highly recommend following the credits list at the end, along with many others using that hashtag, whose rich content would require an encyclopedia to truly do it justice. Check out the Twitter feed for the ideas I wasn’t able to cover.

Category Planning and Design, Public Policy, Resilience, Theory and Practice, TransportationLeave a CommentTags Charleston, cnu, CNU24, Detroit, Equity, gentrification, Hazel Borys, infrastructure, Major Joe Riley, suburban retrofit

May 10, 2016 | 1:38 pm

Balancing the Scales of City Sustainability

I spend virtually all my professional time thinking about the intersection of human settlement and environmental sustainability. I am particularly interested in the built environment of American cities, towns, and suburbs – what I like to call our “people habitat” – and how it relates to the natural world. How can we make these two realms – people habitat and natural habitat – more harmonious?

These issues are acutely on my mind today because I am preparing a talk I have been invited to deliver early next month on “Urbanism and Sustainability.” (For those who are interested, it will be at the annual meeting of the Congress for the New Urbanism, in Detroit, at 10.15 am on June 8.)

Category Environment | Sustainability1 CommentTags CNU 24, Detroit, Kaid Benfield, nature, People Habitat, Resilience, sustainability

May 3, 2016 | 12:01 am

Lean Code Tool

We believe form-based codes are the most efficient, predictable, and elegant way to assure high levels of walkability and urbanism – even in more rural environments. However, the political and staff capacity of many local governments is not prepared for a full zoning reform effort. CNU is developing an agenda of incremental code reform that blends perfectly with the Lean Urbanism initiative funded by the Knight Foundation and led by the Center for Applied Transect Studies.