sounds like MNU - http://www.multinationalunited.com/

its more recognized in urban planning. It's pretty big in Florida. It all depends if you want to ride with that train of thought. A few firms that are active with CNU include Robert AM Stern, DPZ, and Cooper Robertson.

If you don't know who them, don't join them.

Back in the 80's, CNU was a radical group that attempted to destroy modernism through lowest common denominator urban nostalgia. Now CNU is just a self-serving organization that is out of touch with contemporary urban form and architecture (ie their gulf coast nostalgic rebuilding charrettes).

I've never understood how a 19th C. urbanism addresses contemporary issues like sustainability, climate change, global population trends, ubiquitous computing, media culture, and mobility.

Treekiller:
you don't seem to fully understand new urbanism and have decided to reduce your understanding of it to its association to architectural styles or language. What I don't know is how any supposedly "contemporary" urbanism has successfully addressed any of the issues you bring up? Pudong? City Center? WTC? Do any of these improve urbanism?

i am considering taking an urban planning direction after i complete my Bach Degree... i want to focus my career on sustainable architecture and neighborhoods... new-urbanism pretty much hits the nail on the head for me.. in the meantime i want to get involved with an organization that can help me get ahead, get more involved, get more informed and educated... any thoughts?

Aqua has modern buildings TREEKILLER...

The University of Miami really preaches new Urbanism, especially at the grad level. It doesn't get too sustainable though, but I might be wrong since theyve gotten several new faculty now. I think they do some stuff with architecture for humanity as well. maybe that can help..?

interesting how a few years back a thread like this would have generated many highly polemical responses. now, it's like...meh...

shaner, to be a part of the "cutting edge" of new urbanism you would have had to have been there with calthorpe and duany twenty to thirty years ago. to have seen the popularization of the movement you would had to have been there ten to fifteen years ago. personally i think the movement's influence is waning, and i would caution you to go into a cnu based planning program now and base your career off of something that has seemingly run it's course. there are some good ideas embedded in new urbanism, but there are other avenues to pursue them.

Maestro et al, just because I sling mud doesn't mean that I'm ignorant. The CNU cult has enable more sprawl then they have prevented, plus generated more petty tyrant enforcing shallow stylistic covenants and restrictions around the county. What's to love about that?

As to contemporary urbanism, many of those flavors are just as ineffectual and also as purely profit driven. A bass pro shop/retail-entertainment destination doesn't make a good neighborhood, nor address sustainability issues too. But I'm too busy trying to quantify urban performance metrics to spend any more effort slamming the shallowness of CNU.

is it just me, or does that sound like something a traffic engineer would do?

puddles, those metrics will run you over!

In my opinion, trying to find the "cutting edge" or "next big thing" is hard to do, if not pointless. (Remember "blobitecture?")

"New Urbanism" may not be all the rage it once was, but it is still one of several touchstones in discussions on urban form and planning, along with Transit-Oriented Development. One may hate (or like) the architectural expression associated with it, but the planning implications of NU, et al, are now firmly (re)established as part of the discourse of urban planning & development--of which architectural design is but one component.

"Smart Growth" is probably the most common rubric under which these more focused physical design concepts fall, and under the even larger "sustainability" umbrella. Love it, hate it, who cares, the idea of providing a more compact urban alternative to less dense "suburban" development patterns is on the front burner at many a city council meeting and planning commission hearing--at which local architects are sure to be seated in the front row as interested parties.

My point: the stylistic particulars of most NU are, in many ways, irrelevant. But the movement has been very useful in rekindling a larger public (not just professional) debate about how to design and build going forward.

maybe one day Seaside and Celebration won't be expensive conservative vacation towns...

Celebration isn't an expensive conservative vacation town.

Expensive yes... conservative? Not so much. Conservatives are usually repulsed by New Urbanism because of the lack of fee simple ownership, road concurrency (no pod-and-collector systems and universal access) and the "infringement of personal freedoms" like leaving shit all over your lawn, not being able to whatever you want when you want to and not being able to run an illegal business out of your home.

it is true.. examples of 'new urbanism' which actually exist today, ie. seaside, are not real urban environments but Disney world towns where rich folk can play 'urban'.. but could the principals set up in new urbanist handbooks not be used for our current new development? development that is going to happen in the new suburbs or just within the existing urban centres.

here in windsor and everywhere there is an obvious line where the old city ends and the curvy suburb style development begins.. city by-laws make it impossible to develop in any other fashion. ie, single use zoning, setbacks, street design, etc.

i also see our existing urban areas here in the core parts of the city being "suburbanized"?? the nice strip of stores right up at the sidewalk destroyed by the massive shoppers drug mart that demolished a group of units right in the centre of the area.. and plopped their big box with a huge parking lot adjacent. the front facade has no windows, no doors, and destroys the once great commercial strip.

i see streets once with on street parking on both sides being widened to allow more lanes and no street parking... leaving existing 'urban style' commercial shops with nowhere for their customers to park... eventually they will suffer their fate and big box will move in and clear the area.

and all of these actions are ok with the city... as long as someone is building something.. do whatever you want... tear down the historic 100 year old bank to build your garbage enclosure... sure.. our cities don't want to inconvenience the developer.. the same guy who couldn't care less about any of the social, economic or environmental aspects of whey he is doing..

orochi -

you're conflating conservatism with libertarianism.

I'm conflating fiscal conservatism with libertarianism, yes.

But anyone with any real interest in property ownership is generally upset by New Urbanist practices... well, rather the company and eventual municipalities who manage New Urbanist communities.

Seaside and Celebration, although being New Urbanist towns, are about as different as Portland, Maine is from Colorado Springs.