CNU X: The best sessions ever

The tenth Congress for the New Urbanism is shaping up to be CNU’s most in-depth Congress in years. The New Urbanism 101 course, after its raging success in at CNU IX in New York, will introduce newcomers to the terms and ideas of the movement. Following that, participants will enjoy plenaries and in-depth sessions with the expertise and time to explore the most important issues in urbanism today. There are three major themes at this Congress: Self- assessment, financing, and retrofitting postwar development. In addition, we have added a set of three-hour in-depth discussions, where top theoreticians and practitioners will have time to make real progress on knotty issues. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of our Congresses, we assess the movement’s successes, failures, and next steps. The opening plenary, a later session on the “Future of New Urbanism,” and a frank analysis of how new urbanists face the public process, will all be part of this assessment. We will also be asking participants for feedback on CNU through a questionnaire. Financing is represented by the a pre-Congress intensive session and a similar break-out on “The Market Power of New Urbanism.” Other break-outs will discuss how to use New Urbanism to enhance regional competitiveness, “New Urbanism and the Bottom Line,” and overcoming financial barriers to transit-oriented development. The pressing issue of retrofitting postwar suburbia will be front and center at CNU X. Our movement is just beginning to articulate strategies for the hundreds of postwar suburbs seeking walkable, urbane downtowns. This Congress highlights this topic with an opening keynote speech on “The Suburban Challenge” and break-outs like “From Research Park to Complete Community,” “Suburbs to Cities: Adapting to Change,” “The Place for Suburbs: Where should new development go?” “Redesigning the Suburban ‘Strip’ Corridor,” and ”Suburbs: From Adolescents to Cities.” In-depth discussions Practitioners have sometimes complained that Congresses provide plenty of theory, and not enough on how to implement ideas in the real world. New in-depth sessions, occupying the afternoon of Saturday, June 15, should rectify this situation. Each of the eight three-hour sessions will include input from both top theoreticians and top practitioners. The sessions will be: Rebuilding the American City with Transit: The State of the Practice with Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). Transit experts GB Arrington, Hank Dittmar, and Dena Belzer present examples of and barriers to TOD. Practitioners will discuss design and construction of Colorado’s Englewood City Center and Oregon’s Orenco Station. Discussion will consider how transit affects entitlements, financing, tenancy, and market positioning. Making Mixed-Income Communities. Drawing on CNU’s very successful training programs for Housing Authorities, this session will examine how to apply lessons from the federal HOPE VI program throughout development practice. It will examine the details of design, finance, and construction, with an eye toward learning about better unit design, seamlessly combining incomes, and dealing with constrained infill sites. Greyfield Redevelopment. Lee Sobel, fresh from leading CNU’s research into greyfield malls, will convene designers, developers, and marketers from Mizner Park, Mashpee Commons, and Winter Park Village Center. They will touch on critical decisions, hurdles to redevelopment, the role of local government, tenancy, and management. Lessons from Miami Beach. Miami Beach is one of the few American cities that has gracefully transformed from a resort to a postwar suburb to a unique, urbane environment. Academics Jean-Francois LeJeune and Allan Shulman will discuss historic preservation and modern infill with developer Craig Robins and city representative Raul Garcia, offering solutions for other cities. Environmental Indicators. There are many environmental performance measures for New Urbanism. Doug Farr will talk with a variety of environmentalists and industry insiders to begin figuring out what kind of indicators are most useful for measuring our projects. This type of quantitative measurement is necessary for a certification system for New Urbanism — could this be a step in that direction? New Urbanist Codes. CNU’s ten top code experts will look at how to combine design, law, and durability in an effective new urbanist code. The focus will be on codes in five Florida cities. Suburbs: From adolescents to cities. Representatives of Ft. Pierce, Florida, and Prairie Crossing, Illinois, will present their experience retrofitting downtowns into postwar suburbs, based on the GIS work of academic Anne Vernez-Moudon and Bob Dunphy of the Urban Land Institute. Classifying Urban Streets for Placemaking. CNU kicks off its effort to rewrite America’s conventional street classification system. Designers haven’t found that “arterial, collector, and local” describe real places, so internationally known experts like Fred Dock, Bill Morrish, Rick Hall, and Peter Calthorpe will present some of the alternatives.