CNU welcomes new leaders to board

The Congress for the New Urbanism will continue to benefit from the oversight and guidance of its founders while welcoming four talented new members to its board, based on actions taken at the CNU board of director’s June meeting in Pasadena. At the summer meeting, board members voted to confirm founders Robert Davis, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Stefanos Polyzoides as emeritus members of the CNU board. In accepting the emeritus role, an option that other founders are expected to take in the future, Davis, Plater-Zyberk, and Polyzoides relinquish their board positions but remain eligible to attend board meetings and vote on motions. Since CNU directors also accepted the resignation of Dallas-based developer Art Lomenick from the board, the board had the opportunity to add four new board members with a record of service to New Urbanism and impressive work on the ground. These new members are: the Honorable Mike Krusee, Texas state representative; Dhiru Thadani, principal, Ayers Saint Gross Architects and Planners; Ellen Dunham-Jones, director and associate professor of the Architecture Program at Georgia Institute of Technology; and Douglas Farr, principal, Farr Associates. Board chair Hank Dittmar said the board’s evolution reflects New Urbanism’s emergence as a multigenerational movement. “We have to deal with issues of mentorship, succession, and the laudable tendency of new people to question received wisdom and orthodoxy,” Dittmar told members on the opening night of CNU XIII in Pasadena. “We have to do this in a way that balances the need to refresh with the need for continuity and institutional memory.” The founders have played central roles in introducing the world to New Urbanism and in advancing and elevating the movement to the point where many communities are embracing it as their model for growth and development. Board vice chair Jacky Grimshaw said CNU is in a fertile period where founders and new board members, chapter officers, task force chairs, and other new leaders will work together in addressing goals the organization must meet to remain vital. Priorities include more efficiently pooling expertise to face emerging challenges and scaling up the educating and training of professionals to implement such initiatives as form-based code reform, context-sensitive design guidelines for major thoroughfares, and the LEED-Neighborhood Development ratings system. “Through ingenuity and persistence, CNU has developed the right ideas for improving our built environment and creating stronger communities. In the years ahead, we’re going to need an even stronger effort to see these ideas implemented everywhere they’re needed.” Energy, achievement, commitment Appointed for two-year terms, the new board members bring energy, records of achievement, and a commitment to advancing urbanism to the 19-member board. The Director of the Architecture Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Ellen Dunham-Jones chaired CNU’s Education Task Force from 1998 to 2001. A member of two Charter Awards juries, she served as chair of the 2004 awards jury. Her work with CNU reflects her ongoing interest in engaging the disparate worlds of contemporary architectural theory and contemporary development. She is a former partner of Dunham-Jones and LeBlanc Architects and taught at UVA and MIT before moving to Atlanta. She received both A.B. and M.Arch degrees from Princeton University. The author of more than 40 articles, she is currently working on a book about retrofitting suburbs. Dunham-Jones looks forward to helping “CNU bridge theory and practice” and “bring more voices and research from academia into CNU while bringing more of CNU into academia.” Architect and urban planner Dhiru Thadani is a principal with the firm of Ayers Saint Gross in Washington, DC. As Director of the Town Planning Studio at ASG, he has overseen work recognized with multiple Charter Awards. Since 1980 he has practiced architecture and urbanism in Asia, Europe, and North America. Thadani has lectured internationally, and has held faculty positions at the University of Maryland, University of Miami, and the Catholic University of America, where he earned his B.Arch and M.Arch degrees. A charter member of CNU, Thadani has chaired the CNU Design Task Force since 2000. Thadani played a lead role in the organization and creation of the publication for the Windsor Forum on new urbanist education. Thadani wants to “encourage CNU to publish a newsletter, books on best practices, and manuals on principles and techniques of the New Urbanism.” Douglas Farr is the founding principal of Farr Associates in Chicago, a firm committed to “sustainable human environments.” The outgoing chair of CNU’s Environment Task Force, Farr is a member of the LEED Steering Council of the United States Green Building Council and serves as a bridge between the new urbanist and green building communities. Farr is co-chair of CNU’s LEED-Neighborhood Development Committee, which is engaged in a joint venture to create a rating system for environmentally sound urban neighborhoods. Farr Associates served as the lead architect on the Chicago Center for Green Technology, the third building in the world to receive a LEED Platinum rating from the USGBC. Farr holds a B.Arch from the University of Michigan and M.Arch from Columbia University. “We need to provide strategic leadership to increase market demand and accelerate regulatory reform, making it easy for our members, our greatest asset, to design and develop with ongoing excellence,” says Farr. Mike Krusee is the state representative for District 52 in suburban Austin, Texas, a position to which he was first elected in 1992. During his terms in office Representative Krusee has made the development of transportation systems at both a state and local level a key issue in his agenda and is active on many issues related to the rapid growth of the Central Texas region. He is a member of the Executive Council of the Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (CAMPO), which is charged with prioritizing regional transportation needs. Representative Krusee, who attended Georgetown University, also spearheaded efforts that led to the creation of the first Regional Mobility Authority in Central Texas. One of the more prominent supporters of New Urbanism among elected state officials, he sits as chairman of the Texas House of Representatives Committee on Transportation. “The mission of New Urbanism is design,” Krusee told an audience at CNU XIII as part of a session on New Urbanism and conservatives. “Do not be distracted by the political agendas of others: focus relentlessly on design.” u