The CNU 35 Congress Focus
The Building Blocks of Community: Strengthening Social Bonds through the Public Realm
Beyond its buildings, streets, and infrastructure, the strength of a community lies in the connections among its residents— connections that foster belonging, build trust, and enable communities to respond to challenges and shape their collective futures.
The places where these connections take root are essential to community life. Streets, sidewalks, parks, squares, civic spaces, and the places where buildings meet the street form the public realm—the physical foundation of our social infrastructure. When thoughtfully designed and accessible to all, these shared spaces encourage community interaction, strengthen social bonds, and create opportunities for civic life.
At CNU 35, we will explore the public realm as a foundational building block of strong, connected, and resilient communities.
The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul provide a compelling setting for this conversation. Recent events have brought national attention to questions of justice, democracy, and belonging, underscoring the importance of public spaces in shaping community identity, fostering civic participation, and building trust.
The Charter of the New Urbanism establishes the physical definition of streets and public spaces as places of shared use as a primary task of urban architecture and landscape design. Public space is not simply a byproduct of good urban design; it is an intended outcome.
CNU 35 challenges us to consider not only how we design and build communities, but how the places we create strengthen the relationships that sustain them.
Key Questions To Address
We are particularly interested in proposals that explore questions such as:
- Designing for Social Connection: How can the physical form of streets, neighborhoods, civic spaces, and building frontages encourage social interaction, strengthen community identity, and foster a sense of belonging?
- Reclaiming the Public Realm: How can communities transform automobile-oriented streets, disconnected neighborhoods, and underutilized spaces into welcoming places that prioritize people and shared civic life?
- Connecting Design and Community Resilience: What role does the public realm play in strengthening social networks, supporting local problem-solving, and helping communities respond to economic, environmental, and social challenges?
- Rethinking Transportation Planning, Engineering, and Street Design: How can transportation planners, engineers, and designers move beyond conventional traffic engineering practices and automobile-oriented performance measures to create safe, connected, multimodal streets that function as vital public spaces? What changes to street design standards, transportation policies, and infrastructure investment priorities are needed to balance mobility and access with walkability, human-scaled design, and vibrant community life?
- Advancing Inclusive Public Spaces: How can planning, design, and public investment create places that are accessible, welcoming, and meaningful to people of different ages, abilities, backgrounds, and incomes?
- Breaking Down Professional Silos: How can planners, designers, engineers, developers, public officials, and community organizations collaborate to create a coherent public realm rather than a collection of disconnected projects?
- Aligning Policy, Investment, and Design: What changes to zoning, transportation standards, development regulations, financing, and public investment are needed to make connected, human-scaled communities easier to build and sustain?
- Learning from Implementation: What can successful projects, emerging practices, and lessons from unsuccessful efforts teach us about creating and maintaining public spaces that support vibrant community life?