18th Congress for New Urbanism comes to Atlanta

The 18^th Congress of New Urbanism (CNU) conference is being held at the Hilton hotel in downtown Atlanta this week (May 19 – 22). This national conference occurs in a different city annually, and is known as a leading venue for new urbanist education, collaboration, and networking. CNU members come from around the world to attend the conference and discuss development practices and public policies, learn from recent innovative work, and advance new initiatives and community changing strategies.

This conference was brought together by numerous Atlanta partners, such as the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, AARP, the Atlanta Regional Commission, Central Atlanta Progress, The Coca-Cola Company and Sustainable Cities Institute of The Home Depot Foundation in a collaborative effort to deal with how we can make our communities more economically healthy, sustainable, diverse and livable for people of all ages.

ARC Send Comments on New HUD Sustainable Communities Grant Program

In the 2010 budget, Congress provided a total of $150 million to HUD for a Sustainable Communities Initiative to improve regional planning efforts that integrate housing and transportation decisions and increase the capacity to improve land use and zoning.   Of that total, approximately $100 million will be available for regional integrated planning initiatives through HUD’s Sustainable Communities Planning Grant Program.

 During February HUD sought input from the public, including state and local governments, regional bodies, community development entities, and a broad range of other stakeholders on how the program should be structured in order to have the most meaningful impact on sustainable regional planning.

A full overview of the program and comments are available at HUDs website, here :

 ARC provided many comments to HUD regarding the new program.