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The CNU 34 Congress Focus

Building the Future of Neighborhoods, Towns, and Cities:
Applying the Transect Across a Region
 

The Charter recognizes the regional interdependence between urban and rural environments. In partnership with the diverse communities across Northwest Arkansas, CNU34 will focus on applying the Transect to improve how regions expand, helping our host region maintain the unique character of its cities and towns, agricultural lands, and natural landscapes as it harnesses growth.

In the thirty years since the Charter was signed, the Congress for the New Urbanism has advocated for neighborhoods, towns, and cities that are intentionally shaped by local history, climate, market, and building practice. As any metropolitan region grows and evolves, the quality of these urban places – and the quality of life that they provide – is directly influenced by their relationships to the land, and to the culture of development found across the region. So when New Urbanists come to CNU34.Northwest Arkansas, we will bring our strategic understanding of the wide range of urban conditions that support community-building as we Focus on applying The Transect to shape the growth of the neighborhoods, towns, and cities across NWA. In our impact in NWA, we will honor the Charter’s guidance: investment in multiple centers and clear edges; supporting neighborhoods, districts, and corridors as building blocks for urbanism; and a regional approach offering real choices for housing, transportation, and opportunity.

As a tool for understanding urbanism, the Transect arranges the elements of urbanism in useful order by classifying them from rural to urban. Every urban element finds a place within its continuum. A street is more urban than a road; a curb is more urban than a swale; a brick wall is more urban than a wooden fence; and a formal row is more urban than a cluster of trees. This ordering tool can radically help shape decision-making, when applied to a metropolitan region undergoing rapid change, because a properly ordered urban-to-rural regional approach helps ensure that every community member can enjoy lifestyle choices across the variety of urban places. The Transect empowers design and redesign of neighborhoods, towns, and cities representing the best benefits that the new urbanist vision offers.

The Problem Space: the Growth of Neighborhoods, Towns, and Cities Across a Region

In a rapidly-growing region like Northwest Arkansas, a well-coordinated approach to the development and redevelopment of the built environment is fundamental to ensuring that growth is healthy, sustainable, humane, and protects the uniquely valuable character of the surrounding natural environment.  As communities face important decisions about their built future, they will need to do so in a way that respects context and scale with each new development and redevelopment.  The Charter of the New Urbanism describes the breadth of principles that apply to the full rural-to-urban spectrum of development, and when applied effectively, these principles ensure that every community possesses its own authentic identity, from the most rural farming village to the most urban downtown core.  The ordering device that the New Urbanism uses to demonstrate this revolutionary idea is the Transect.

In Northwest Arkansas and similar fast-growing regions across the country, the practical and political constraints in any given community push growth pressures to the rural edges of the region, simultaneously ignoring healthy opportunities for ordered density while eradicating rural ways of life.  The Transect offers a powerful tool for strategic community-building that establishes an ambitious yet rational vision for change.  In reforming existing sprawl, application of the Transect offers a clear way to redevelop autocentric conditions and the harms it causes.  In the development of new settlements, the Transect provides an approach for urban design that will possess qualities associated with the best of old urbanism.  NWA faces urbanization pressures that many growing regions can identify with, where economic progress and migrating populations can clash with the need to preserve nature and farmland.  

At CNU34, New Urbanists will use application of the Transect to help small towns think critically about the future they want to create through the ways they guide land use.  We will provide tools and resources that embolden cities to manage urban growth by protecting and expanding the quality of life that makes the region so attractive to growth in the first place. 

 

CNU 34 Focus and our Community of Practice

  • Urban designers and architects will bring their best examples of blocks, streets, and buildings that demonstrate how careful design creates complete built environments that put people first.
  • Planners and real estate developers will share their best strategies for regulating, financing, and implementing built new urbanism that is proven to be both profitable and purpose-driven.
  • Transportation experts will offer their valuable knowledge toward the region’s pressing need to rapidly scale mobility solutions that reduce car dependency and increase access to all.
  • Policy writers and code reformers will lend their experience in advocating for regulatory reforms that successfully empower quality urbanism and avoid costly suburban sprawl.
  • Advocacy champions will collaborate on legislative agenda that supports new urbanism, promotes housing abundance, and offers pathways between fire safety and walkable urbanism.
  • Local and regional government officials and municipal staff will demonstrate how New Urbanism can improve economic vitality, equity, and sustainability in small-to-mid-sized communities
  • Those focused on the economics of sustainable growth will play a key role in identifying the data to support quality urbanism and the financial risks of continuing a business-as-usual approach.

Key Questions that will be addressed at CNU 34 Northwest Arkansas

As the new urbanist movement comes to Northwest Arkansas to leave a lasting impact on the future of the region, the content of the 2026 Congress will respond to key issues for local impact throughout the sessions, workshops, meetings, tours, Main Stages, and Keynotes of CNU34. Session submitters are encouraged to propose content that will address the following:

  • How can municipalities move the regional conversation beyond suburban sprawl and rethink zoning and development rules to encourage more walkable, urban environments?
  • How can polycentric regional planning preserve local identity while promoting connected urban growth?
  • How can we empower residents to actively shape their communities’ futures?
  • What actionable alternatives exist to counter the negative impacts of sprawl on communities?
  • How can we discuss growth and quality of life in plain language, highlighting hidden costs without polarizing debates?
  • How can we measure the long-term value of land through sustainable urban growth strategies?
  • How can a regional approach integrate infrastructure and investment for all non-vehicular transportation modes?
  • What incentives and deterrents have proven effective in influencing local development practices?
  • What strategies can shift capital and financial investments toward urbanist projects?