David Byrne speaks to Congress for the New Urbanism on Bicycling - Atlan...

CNU 18 - Two videos and then commentary below:



Part two below:



It was very cool to be sitting in the front row of the Tabernacle in Atlanta watching David Byrne make his presentation on cycling in various places around the world. Sorry for the shaky cam and the fact that part 2 got cut off a bit toward the end.

CNU 18 was a fantastic experience. To get to meet and hear from Andres Duany, John Norquist, Peter Calthorpe, Emily Talen and many, many more during the course of a day is pretty exciting stuff to someone who drank the New Urbanism KoolAid a loooong time ago.

Not that the movement is perfect - far from it, and part of why the Congresses keep growing. I think people are still really learning what NU is and what it is not, and the Congress and its members have not really defined a message that the general public really understands. In fact, I think the academic focus on Celebration and Seaside is actually detrimental to the overall message. The Congress and the ideas it champions would be far more effective in promoting the HOPE IV initiatives.

Secretary Donovan of HUD spoke one morning and had many positive substantive things to say. When he quoted and credited Jack Kemp, and mentioned Howard Roark, I almost fell out of my chair. An Obama administration official actually quoting Ayn Rand and saying nice things about Kemp? Holy moley! I expected a partisan political speech and a lot of blather - what I got was a bit of bipartisanship and substance that we can all support. Amazing.

NextGen: There is a sub group within the Congress that is centered on students and recent grads - and people like me who have never been to a CNU before - and they are pushing for new ways to expand the portfolio of ideas and promote the canon to future leaders. Bravo to them. Since I've been involved in  planning since about 1991 or so (I am old) in various fashions, I expect to get active with this group - I know the issues, but really have no past with the congress and its leadership. In an odd fashion, I can be 'new' and still not lose any of the 'old'.

The message about compact growth is becoming ingrained in the public discourse, but it is still lost behind the shadow of Seaside. There needs to be a marketing push that hones the concept to something the general public can support. Demographics are already in favor of New Urbanism, but the concepts are not yet defined as simply as necessary.