Please join us for CNU-CTX's Annual Membership Meeting on Saturday December 7th from  12 - 1:30 p.m. at the Austin Energy Headquarters in Mueller.

This Event is Free and Open to the Public

After short chapter business we hope you will stay for the presentation: 

Colony Park - Where Community Vision Becomes Reality

As Mueller marks its 20th anniversary, the City of Austin is set to break ground on our next great neighborhood—Colony Park! With the Master Development Agreement now complete, this visionary community in Far East Austin is on track to launch in January 2025.

Join CNU-CTX for an engaging discussion with the Colony Park Sustainable Community Team, featuring representatives from the City of Austin and Catellus. Our distinguished speakers will include Martin Barrera, AIA, LEED-AP, EDFP, Redevelopment Project Manager, as well as key voices from Catellus.

They’ll share plans for a vibrant, gridded street network, a wide range of housing options, and a mixed-income, mixed-use community model that builds on the successes and lessons learned from Mueller, bringing them forward to give shape to a new community in Far East Austin.

Please join us for the conversation and to celebrate the future of Austin’s next thriving, inclusive neighborhood!

Join The Congress for the New Urbanism - Central Texas Chapter as we proudly welcome Veronica O. Davis, renowned expert and author of Inclusive Transportation: A Manifesto for Repairing Divided Communities, as our Annual Luncheon Speaker. In her groundbreaking book, Veronica exposes the inequities inherent in traditional transportation planning and presents an inspiring vision for a transformative shift. While Austin has made great strides in recent years, there is still much work to be done and great opportunities to make a better city through better transportation planning.

Charting a Course to Connected Communities: A Roadmap for an Inclusive Austin will immerse attendees in Veronica’s perspective on recentering transportation decisions in people. Attendees will learn how her proposed changes in training, community engagement, data collection, and professional collaboration can pave the way for a safer, better, and more inclusive transportation system.

Veronica's work serves as a compelling call to action, urging transit planners and engineers to actively contribute to shaping communities based on principles of justice and equity. Don't miss this opportunity to engage with a thought leader promoting important changes in transportation planning.

Veronica O. Davis has nearly 20 years of experience in engineering and transportation planning. She is an Entrepreneur and Civil Engineer, co-founding Nspiregreen, LLC., which manages Community, Multimodal Transportation, and Environmental planning and consulting. While at Nspiregreen, she led the Vision Zero Action Plans for Washington, DC and the City of Alexandria. She co-founded Black Women Bike, an organization and movement which builds a community and interest in biking among black women through education, advocacy and recreation. Veronica serves on the committees for Transportation Research Board, the board for America Walks, as well as technical advisory boards at the University of Maryland and Cornell University. She was recognized as a Champion of Change by the White House in 2012 for her professional accomplishments and advocacy.

Sponsorships and Tickets Available Now!

Please join CNU-CTX and AIA Austin Urban Design Committee for screening of short films looking at promoting human centric public spaces.

5 - 6:00 pm Happy Hour with Open Bar
6 - 7:30 pm Film Screening

Tickets available now: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/ev/reg/5da678a?mode=preview&source_id=bf6d9f3a-af5e-498b-9325-f39d21115e20&source_type=em&c=&mode=preview&source_id=b121ebd8-e0ec-4f26-9267-086c3b42a924&source_type=em&c

Join us as we host Dr. Andre M. Perry as our Annual Luncheon keynote speaker. Austin is making major investments in a high capacity transit system, and is exploring ways through equitable Transit Oriented Developments (eTODs) and other land use reforms to make these investments without exacerbating the displacement of vulnerable populations. Dr. Perry will discuss how structural racism comprised in our city’s land use, infrastructure, and economic development policies have systematically devalued Black people, their assets, and neighborhoods, and how current and future developments can divest from the practices of the past while restoring value that’s been extracted by racism.

Andre M. Perry is a Senior Fellow at Brookings Metro, a scholar-in-residence at American University, and a professor of practice of economics at Washington University. A nationally known and respected commentator on race, structural inequality, and education, Perry is the author of the book “Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities.” Perry is a regular contributor to MSNBC and has been published by numerous national media outlets, including The New York Times, The Nation, The Washington Post, TheRoot.com and CNN.com. Perry has also made appearances on HBO, CNN, PBS, National Public Radio, NBC, and ABC. Perry’s research focuses on race and structural inequality, education, and economic inclusion. Perry’s recent scholarship at Brookings has analyzed Black-majority cities and institutions in America, focusing on valuable assets worthy of increased investment.

Sponsorships and Tickets available now!

Seemingly mundane parking regulations have profound and harmful impacts on city life.

The regulations that create an overabundance of free parking comes at a price of fostering lifeless streets, incentivizing car travel, exacerbating climate change, and contributing to the ever growing un-affordability challenges of our city. At the same time, finding an on-street parking spot in our densest and most active districts can be impossible. Failure to adequately manage demand for curb parking in our highest-visited areas creates congestion, frustration, and the perception of inadequate parking.

CNU-CTX is pleased to host Donald Shoup, UCLA Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Urban Planning.

Professor Shoup’s keynote will discuss how parking policies affect cities, the economy, and the environment; and provide his three-part prescription for how cities can improve their streets and places, protect the environment, and promote social justice.

Two other panels on parking reform will complete the program.

Join us for a look at cities around the country that have changed the rules that govern parking using the Shoup approach, and a local exploration into what parking reforms could do for Austin—and the way to get there.

Donald Shoup is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Urban Planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research has focused on transportation, public finance, and land economics, with emphasis on how parking policies affect cities, the economy, and the environment. In his landmark 2005 book, The High Cost of Free Parking, Shoup recommended that cities should (1) charge fair market prices for on-street parking, (2) spend the revenue to improve public services in the metered neighborhoods, and (3) remove off-street parking requirements. In his 2018 book, Parking and the City, Shoup and his co-authors examined the results where cities have adopted these policies. The successful outcomes show this trio of reforms may be the simplest, cheapest, and fastest way to improve cities, protect the environment, and promote social justice.

Join CNU-CTX for a dynamic day of concepts and conversations at our inaugural Reimagining Community forum.

We’re pleased to present a full day of online speakers, panels, and connections. With four panels discussing topics like affordable housing, transit and infrastructure, to healthy communities and equitable cities—and featuring a must-see keynote session by Jan Gehl—this virtual gathering will be an interactive forum to discuss the critical issues that are driving our society today.

Austin is a magnetic city with a unique culture and quality of life under threat. Adding population faster than the City can plan for its future, Austin is becoming ever more congested, unaffordable, and segregated. Recent planning efforts to address these problems have foundered on a suspicious community lacking trust. 

But what can be done? 

Doug Farr, author of Sustainable Nation: Urban Design Patterns for the Future, believes that neighborhoods are the messy yet sustainable structure to cities, and will discuss how empathetic planning that invites the whole of the community into the discussion, and requires considering the perspective of others, is the key to inspiring trust and unlocking sustainable solutions to the problems of growth.

Sponsorships and Tickets available now.

Please join CNU-CTX for our fourth annual screening of selected films from the New Urbanism Film Festival (NUFF). 

The NUFF features a series of sometimes funny, sometimes moving, and always thought provoking short films about urban design, transportation, affordability, and pressures brought by rapid change in cities and neighborhoods.

Calling all members of CNU (and all interested). On Friday, April 12th we will be holding our Annual Membership Meeting. All are welcome to attend. Members will elect the nominated slate for the Board of Directors.  

After company business we are thrilled to host our featured speaker Alan Graham of Mobile Loaves & Fishes and Community First Village to talk about Building a Community First!  

Alan is the founder and CEO of Mobile Loaves & Fishes. MLF is a social outreach ministry committed to providing permanent, sustainable solutions for the chronically homeless while surrounding them with compassion, love and dignity. Those who know Alan best know that he is a man on a mission — to relieve the struggles homeless individuals face in obtaining their basic needs of food, community and a place to call home. 

Since its founding in 1998, Mobile Loaves & Fishes volunteers have served more than 5 million meals with a side of hope to homeless men and women living on the streets of Austin. Graham is also the visionary behind MLF’s Community First! Village — a 27-acre master planned development that provides affordable, permanent housing and a supporting community to the chronically homeless in Central Texas. 

We could not be more excited to host Alan for a talk about the love and urban design that built a community to serve the chronically homeless at the Community First! Village just outside Austin. Hope to see everyone there.

Join CNU Central Texas for a walking tour of the Seaholm EcoDistrict led by veteran Seaholm District project manager and CNU-CTX board member Greg Kiloh.

Over the last two decades, the Seaholm EcoDistrict has transformed from a blighted industrial brownfield into one of the greenest, most innovative and dense mixed-use urban neighborhoods in the city. As the major construction of public infrastructure nears completion, the district’s personality as a tech industry and culinary hot-spot is emerging.

The tour will include a sneak-peek preview of the New Central Library led by the highly entertaining veteran Library Facilities Process Manager, John Gillum. After the Grand Opening on October 28th, the ‘library of the future’ will become our current favorite place to seek knowledge, technology and inspiration.

Meet on the north end of the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge at 9:00. The tour will begin promptly at 9:30. The tour will conclude with an optional group lunch at one of the local eateries.

9:00 – 1:00 Saturday October 21, 2017

Consider Bcycle, Cap Metro Routes 3, 338, 803.

Paid public parking is available at Seaholm and City Hall.

Join CNU-CTX on Saturday, June 3rd for our annual Jane’s Walk.  This year, in conjunction with Our Congress Avenue: Transform! urban design initiative, we will be exploring the Main Street of Texas through the lens of the life and work of Jane Jacobs.

Jane's Walks are free organized walking tours, in which people get together to explore, talk and envision their city neighborhoods.

Jane Jacobs' urbanism and activism championed a fresh, community-based approached to city building. Her seminal work, and indictment of urban planning in the middle of the 20th century, The Death and Life of Great American Cities remains one of the most influential books ever to be written about the importance of cities and the failures of modern urban planning to recognize their essential economic functions.

We're looking forward to exploring the successes, shortcomings and opportunities that are presented by Congress Avenue and consider how Jane Jacobs’ ideas might help shape the next chapter in the most important street in the state.

Join us to learn about all the exciting things accomplished and going on and being planned by our CNU Central Texas Chapter. Find out where you can plug in and get more involved in the work of our committees.

At our annual meeting, CNU-CTX members will elect new Chapter Directors.  The 2017 slate of nominees are as follows:

• Erika Ragsdale, CNU-CTX Director, CNU-Accredited Planning Coordinator for the City of San Antonio with experience in the public and private sectors. (renewing for a 3 year term)
• Gabriel Diaz Montemayor, CNU-CTX Director, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. (renewing for a 3 year term)
• Sarah Esserlieu, CNU-CTX Interim Director, Senior Management Analyst, City of San Antonio.
• Ben Holland, CNU-CTX Interim Director, Senior Associate at Rocky Mountain Institute, where he manages the Mobility Oriented Development initiative. His focus is on land use and mobility as as service. Ben holds a M.S. in business analytics from University of Colorado.
• Chris Riley, former City of Austin Councilmember, and recent graduate of the Pratt Instituted with a masters in Urban Placemaking and Management.
• Meredith Powell, Founder/Owner of Public City, Vice Chair of Evolve Austin Board of Directors, on the Board of Directors of the Austin Community Design and Development Cente, and serves on the curatorial board for Pecha Kucha Night Austin.
• Keri Burchard-Juarez, Municipal Transportation Leader with Garver, licensed professional civil engineer and certified project management professional with 17 years of experience in the design and construction of public infrastructure.
• Dean Almy, Associate Professor of Architecture, Feelow of the Forum for Urban Design, and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design and The Texas Urban Futures Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin.  

To vote you must be a member in good standing.  Join CNU or renew your membership online here in advance. National CNU membership is free for students, $40 for advocates, $125 for nonprofit/government, $195 for full Urbanist membership.

CNU-CTX is pleased to join Reconnect Austin and Project Great Steets a for a Cafe Urban featuring Sinclair Black, Congress for the New Urbanism 2008 Athena Medal recipient and Director Emeritus of CNU-CTX, for a celebration of 50+ years of teaching and practice.

101 Semesters Beyond the Studio is a month-long exhibition hosted by the University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture which recounts a myriad of explorations: from creating beautiful designs to campaigning to bury the highway; traveling around the globe to making special places; honoring Texas heritage to revitalizing downtown Austin; serving the public good to inspiring future citizen architects.

Hear Sinclair’s stories about these explorations in a private lecture specifically for CNU members. In his own words: a snapshot of a lifetime of work with more to come!

There are two opportunities to hear Sinclair talk about his work and tour the exhibit. Both events start in the lecture room at Goldsmith Hall (399 W 22nd St. Austin, TX 78705) and conclude in the Mebane Gallery to see the exhibit.

The long anticipated draft of Austin’s new Land Development Code had been released. Please join CNU-CTX for a presentation by Code Studio’s Lee Einsweiler, and primary author of Imagine Austin Garner Stoll.

Lee will bring his considerable expertise and experience in preparing over 20 form based codes to discuss how the draft code is organized, functions, and attempts to implement Imagine Austin.
Garner will discuss how the code responds to the Code Diagnosis conducted in the first phase of CodeNEXT.

Both will be on hand to answer all your questions about what in the Code will support the Creation of Places People Love.

Lee Einsweiler has been involved in planning, zoning and plan implementation in a variety of settings over the past 30 years. His emphasis has been on redevelopment activity in urban areas, beginning in the 1980’s and continuing with his recent work in Fort Worth’s Stockyards, Asheville’s River Arts District, and the entire City of Los Angeles.

Lee sharpened his skills in the preparation of zoning and subdivision regulations across the country, and has been personally responsible for over 50 code projects, including the complete revision and adoption of over 30 codes and the preparation of over 20 form-based codes. His combination of conventional zoning know-how and new code approaches are rare in the profession, and his ability to facilitate the consideration and adoption of new zoning serves his clients well.

Lee previously served as an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Community & Regional Planning at the University of Texas. He is a past board member of the CNU-CTX, where he chaired the Policy Committee. Lee is a frequent speaker at state and national conferences on the issue of zoning and form-based codes.

Garner Stoll has extensive experience as a city planner in “town‐gown” communities. He has managed planning programs in the university communities of Lawrence, Kansas; Lincoln, Nebraska; Boulder, Colorado; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and Austin, Texas. Over his 40‐year career, he played a key role in efforts to rethink the functions and procedures of planning departments and improve customer service. One of his biggest accomplishments was managing the preparation of the “Imagine Austin” comprehensive plan for Austin, Texas which has received numerous state and national awards.

Join CNU-CTX for San Antonio's first Cafe Urban, a quarterly event bringing city-lovers together to discuss various topics of New Urbanism and the built environment. Our first topic of the year is Missing Middle housing. Learn more at the Facebook event page!

Please join CNU-CTX and allied groups and friends for a lively Holiday Happy Hour Party at Delicious. Come for conviviality, nibbles, and Cards Against Urbanity - cash bar. 

Season of Sharing:  New urbanists helping new urbanites

CNU-CTX will collect cash donation to buy needed basic household supplies for the new urban dwellers at Bluebonnet Studios.  

Foundation Communities just opened these apartments at 2301 S. Lamar Blvd. Help CNU-CTX welcome the new residents - about 100 single adults, who include formerly homeless veterans, low-wage workers, seniors, and individuals with disabilities who haven’t had their own home.

We’ll have a display showing cleaning and personal care supplies the new residents will need which will be purchased with the help of your donations.

What are the best ways to keep our region moving as it grows?
Central Texas urban corridors are building blocks of a sustainable mobility network and the front lines of the struggle to integrate transportation and land use. Join CNU-CTX and national transportation thought leader Jeffrey Tumlin for a timely exploration of the region’s past and future and the potential for invigorating our streets and neighborhoods.

Jeffrey Tumlin is director of strategy at Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates, a San Francisco-based transportation planning and engineering firm that focuses on sustainable mobility. For more than twenty years,he has led station area, downtown, citywide, and campus plans, and delivered lectures and classes in 20 U.S. states and five other countries. His projects have won awards from the U.S. General Services Administration, Institute of Transportation Engineers, American Planning Association, American Society of Landscape Architects, Congress for the New Urbanism, and Urban Land Institute. He is the author of Sustainable Transportation:  Tools for Creating Healthy, Vibrant and Resilient Communities.

Join us for the first San Antonio screening of the New Urbanism Film Festival (NUFF)! Grab a beer, mingle with fellow urbanists and enjoy a collection of films on the topic of the built environment.

City-lovers of all backgrounds are invited! Anyone who works to redesign a street, strengthen ties in a neighborhood, develop new housing, or preserve a historic landmark is putting New Urbanism into action—regardless of their affiliation or background.

Charles Marohn is in town to talk about to talk about The Hidden Costs of Suburban Sprawl at City Hall.  We encourage everyone to see that and then come join Chuck and us afterwords for a Congress for the New Urbanism Central Texas Chapter, #atxurbanists, and Strong Towns Central- Texas co-hosted Happy Hour Pour House Pub.

Please join CNU-CTX and RECA for a Networking Happy Hour on Thursday, August 4th, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.