The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), with its thousands of members, is coming to Buffalo for its 22nd annual convention, CNU22. It will be held at the downtown Hyatt and the Convention Center this June 4 through 7. The CNU was formed as a reaction to the devastating results of sprawl, which has overcome our country. The Congress is composed of architects, educators, urban designers, government leaders, and plain old citizens who work to promote a better way of building and designing our urban environments. The “better way” that they promote is based on tried and true, walkable, human scaled built environments. To herald the meeting in Buffalo, CNU has released this new video short from Paget Films. It shows interview clips of several prominent urban designers and theorists describing why Buffalo will be an important and unique place to hold the Congress.
Buffalo promises to be a very different kind of meeting place for the CNU. Typically the Congress has met in places with robust economies such as West Palm Beach Florida, Austin Texas, and Atlanta Georgia. These are places which have never suffered the major bust cycle that Buffalo has gone through. These other CNU venue cities all have big new developments based on New Urbanist principles where Buffalo has none. The conference in Buffalo is titled “The Resilient City”, in recognition of the tough times the City and region endured and the high quality urban environment that has survived and is now increasingly seen as an asset. This year the Congress will not be gathering to look at the latest new New Urbanist subdivisions and patting themselves on the back. No, Buffalo will be a learning lab like no other in which the Congress has met.
The choice of Buffalo and this title are important indicators of an important shift in thinking among CNU members and urbanism in general. Much of the emphasis in New Urbanism has been on new construction much of which has been located on virgin farm land. This has been a topic of some debate and a source of criticism from inside and from outside new urbanist circles. But, the reality of the world is that most of the money driving urban development over the last 50 years has been targeted for new construction. With the 2008 financial crash and an a new awareness that our planet’s resources are finite (I know, obvious right?), long undervalued places such as Buffalo are now increasingly being seen as well positioned for sustainable growth and an as examples of how we can manage our cities in a future of scarcity. The interviews in this very short but informative video address that theme. Take a look and enjoy.