31st Congress for the New Urbanism
Verdant Studio traveled to Charlotte, NC for the 31st annual Congress for the New Urbanism.
The Congress for the New Urbanism carefully chose Charlotte as the location for their 31st Congress - it's vibrant, diverse, the third fastest growing region and the 15th largest city in the country. CNU reports, the city has deep roots in new urbanism with beautiful, John Nolen-designed neighborhoods, thriving mill villages, many completely built new urbanist projects, and new urban transit-oriented development neighborhoods that have added over 50,000 housing units in 10 years.
Charlotte is aggressively working to address economic mobility and affordable housing with public-private partnerships and new regulatory tools. With the recent adoption of the Charlotte Future 2040 Comprehensive Plan, CNU 31's host city is ready for implementation and action. One of the new developments of this plan includes the abolishment of exclusive single-family residential districts, all new residential will allow for both single and multi-family homes. Charlotte has also invested several billion dollars in transportation to support walkability, there are over 10,000 new residential units at the South End light rail station areas, and over 3.8 billion dollars of investment in its first transit corridor.
Chris McCray, Verdant Studio's Director of Architecture, and Jessica Hester, CEO + Principal Architect attended the conference, enjoying the networking, learning opportunities, and workshops including a fun interactive activity creating better facades that participate in the pedestrian experience (see pictures below).
Northwest Arkansas' Thaden School presented their tactical urbanism project recently completed in Downtown Bentonville with the help of Verdant Studio (and countless others). This student-led project empowered young people to be change-makers in their community, and created a solution for a problematic traffic intersection with the development of a plan centered around the installation of crosswalks and a mural.
Hester said, "CNU is a different conference than what we usually attend, it's very big picture thinking! It's wonderful to be around so many like-minded people who are really trying to create positive place-making."
Traveling to and from the conference, Verdant Studio also got to experience first-hand our design of the Johnston + Murphy store in the Charlotte airport.
