Veritas et Venustas

Archtober & CNU New York: Principles of Urban Design

Broad Street, New York, New York, circa 1915.

ONE OF FOUR ARCHTOBER EVENTS AT CNU New York is a walking tour that uses the streets of New York City to illustrate the principles of urbanism and urban design. This will be the newest tour in a series given by John Massengale for the Institute for Classical Art & Architecture (ICAA) and the universities of Miami, Notre Dame and Georgia Tech.

Massengale is a Board member of the Congress for New Urbanism (CNU), the founding Board Chair of CNU New York, and a former Board member of the ICAA and Federated Conservationists of Westchester County (FCWC). Co-author with Robert A.M. Stern of New York 1900, Metropolitan Architecture & Urbanism 1890-1915 (Rizzoli, 1983), he is writing Street Design, The Art & Practice of Making Complete Streets (J. Wiley & Sons, 2013) with Victor Dover. An architect and urbanist, Massengale has won awards for architecture, urban design, architectural history and historic preservation.

WHEN & WHERE: The tour will meet Saturday, October 27 at 9:15 am on the steps of Federal Hall, 26 Wall Street at the head of Broad Street, and will end at 12:15, with a Dutch Treat lunch at a location to be determined for anyone who wishes to stay.

Tour limited to 20. Please RSVP @ http://bit.ly/cnumass

AIA credits applied for.

Archtober & CNU New York

Left: Graphic showing fiscal return for individual parcels in downtown Asheville, North Carolina. Right: Aerial photo showing the existing site and building configuration. Images courtesy of Joe Minicozzi, Urban3.

IN OUR ARCHTOBER SERIES: With the multiple crises of municipal insolvency, climate change and citizen push back against government regulation, it makes sense to consider a new balance sheet approach to granting development approvals. Such an approach will screen for more compact, centrally located, high-value buildings that pay back the municipality’s initial infrastructure investment much more quickly.

This fiscally driven regulatory strategy is simple and nonideological. By “following the money,” it achieves Smart Growth / New Urbanism out-comes without invoking either term. The approach has the potential to reduce and even eliminate cumbersome and highly subjective development processes and regulations.

Peter Katz, author of The New Urbanism (McGraw-Hill 1994), was the founding director of the Congress for the New Urbanism and aco-founder of the Form-Based Codes Institute. He writes and consults on matters of community planning, real estate marketing and development regulation.

WHEN & WHERE: Wednesday, October 17 at 7:00 pm, in the Mohawk showroom at 71 West 23rd Street, 18th floor, New York, New York 10010. Reception with wine and cheese at 6:30 pm.

COST & RSVP: $8, free for CNU and Empire State Future members. Attendance limited to 100. Please RSVP @ CNU.org (http://bit.ly/cnukatz)

Presented by CNU New York in partnership with Empire State Future and Archtober.

Download the announcement for Peter Katz's talk