For the 24th year, CNU's Charter Awards will recognize outstanding achievements in architectural, landscape, and urban design and planning worldwide. Regarded as the preeminent award for excellence in urban design, the CNU Charter Awards honor a select number of winners—including student winners. Winning projects represent major contributions to building more equitable, sustainable, connected, healthy, and prosperous communities.
CNU convenes a Charter Awards jury of distinguished designers, architects, planners, and scholars who review entries and select winners. Applicants are judged on the extent to which they fulfill and advance the principles of the Charter of the New Urbanism, which defines the essential qualities of outstanding buildings and urban places. Charter Awards recognize projects at three scales:
- The Region: Metropolis, City, and Town
- Neighborhood, District, and Corridor
- Block, Street, and Building
Special Category: Emerging Projects. To highlight design and urbanist innovations in the planning and design process, an applicant can designate the project as an “Emerging Project.” These are theoretical or research projects that may not be immediately realizable but hold exceptional promise for showing how to apply the techniques and principles of the New Urbanism to the evolving realities of climate change, housing affordability, transportation needs, a public realm complicated by new technologies, and suburban sprawl. They may be at any geographic scale (Region, Metropolis, City, Town; Neighborhood, District, Corridor; or Block, Street, Building).
The winners will be celebrated at CNU 32 in Cincinnati, OH on May 15 - May 18, 2024. If you have any questions, please contact Lauren Mayer at lmayer@cnu.org
Ready to apply? Find the application link here.
Still need to get familiar with the guidelines? See "Guidelines" below.