CNU 34 Diary: Northwest Arkansas

Historic sign found downtown

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

I don't know what it must have felt like for a medieval peasant to visit Rome, but I am in a similar position at the 34th annual Congress for the New Urbanism. Wal-Mart, the enormous conglomerate where many Americans shop, is headquartered here, the longtime home of founder Sam Walton. The Waltons and their fellow townspeople have used all the money we've sent here over the years to build a place that--surprise!--looks nothing like a Wal-Mart.

Jane and I arrived about 6:00 this evening after an all-day drive from Iowa. I psyched myself up on the way listening to John Simmerman's Active Towns interview with Michael Bruntlett about bike infrastructure development in China.

The conference had already kicked off yesterday, and today featured a day of panels and activities in Fayetteville, about 25 miles south of here. That included the keynote address by economist Raj Chetty. However, I am used to traveling to the conference on Wednesday, and did not make the necessary adjustments. Coe College has just finished its spring semester, and I only got my grades in Monday; I'm not sure I could have gotten here sooner, but next year I'll try to adjust myself to the conference schedule.

We're staying at the 21C Museum Hotel on A Street, which is closed to traffic. We spent the evening walking around downtown, which is exactly as advertised, if maybe more pricey than a simple Arkansas country town. 

Main Street, downtown Bentonville

There are a ton of bicyclists of all ages, maybe particularly on a night like tonight, which was incredibly lovely. The streets are narrow, and cars drive slowly, and yield to pedestrians. The public library is spacious and well-stocked, including a copy of Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar. 

Children's section, Bentonville Public Library

The chess club was hosting a large number of matches in the park by the county courthouse. We found, for the second year in a row, some outdoor dining to start our visit to the host city.

Al fresco dining at Tavola Trattoria

Tomorrow, I will start the serious business of this conference. First, I need to find where, among numerous sites scattered across several Northwest Arkansas towns, I check in and get my name badge.

People even ride up the Ledger building!

Thursday, May 14, 2026

Urbanists wait for the venue to be opened

The strain of a multi-venue conference showed early today. Fayetteville got breakfast at the Graduate Hotel and information on where to get badges; Bentonville got neither of these. We waited outside the locked First Baptist Church, pelted by canned Christian pop, until 9:15. (The first round of panels began at 9:30.) Once in, I was directed to another building a block away to get my badge. All in a day's adventure, though. The highlight of the morning was meeting Erika Fletcher, whose firm is in charge of public relations for the conference. She needed to get in to get set up, and told me how she would accomplish that by talking to people, what they would say and how she would respond. And lo, it came to pass exactly as she had foretold. She apologized for not getting me in as well, but I was okay just to watch a truly badass woman at work. She also recommended Ozark Mountain Bagels for breakfast, which proved to be very good.

This afternoon I went on a bike tour of the city. I knew it was a serious bike tour because John Simmerman was making a video for Active Towns, my first CNU bike tour to receive this imprimatur since Charlotte in 2023.

John Simmerman recording David Wright from
the City of Bentonville

Our tour took us on the Razorback Greenway, which runs through the Walmart campus.

Walmart campus, Bentonville

It is truly a beautifully landscaped campus. The trail runs through rather than around it, because corporate hoped to encourage 10 percent of their employees to ride to work. I had a real medieval-punk-at-St.-Peter's-Basilica moment. It's hard to connect all this beauty and philanthropy to the footprint of Walmart around the country.

Other highlights from the tour:

These speech bubbles on the A Street Promenade (which opened in
October 2025) are among 322 works of art in the public
realm of Bentonville

Town Branch, mixed use trail oriented development:
oriented to the trail not the street

Under construction: Future STEM university at
the former Walmart campus site

Coffeeshop in the woods;
Airship Coffee at Coler

I also attended a panel on transect-based zoning featuring the planning directors of Bentonville and Rogers, and a main stage talk, "Building Places People Love," featuring veteran urbanists Matthew Lister (Gehl-Americas) and Carol Coletta (Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation). At the book sale run by Underbrush Books, I bought Palaces for the People by Eric Klinenberg (Broadway, 2018), who's speaking tomorrow, and Building the Cycling City by Melissa and Chris Bruntlett (Island, 2018). And Jane and I briefly stopped by the reception honoring the imminent publication of Art of the New Urbanism volume 2 (Wiley, 2026). 

Bonus content: Norm Van Eeden Petersman interviews homebuilder and missing middle enthusiast Alkarim Devani on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast.

Friday, May 15, 2026

Bike to Work Week is underway, sort of

 

I biked to work!

(5/11/2026) It was 41F (5C) degrees this morning, for a chilly start to Bike to Work Week in Cedar Rapids. The forecast high was 68, and the wind was light, so though it was not as warm as last year, it was a good day for biking. Because I'll be leaving shortly for Arkansas to attend the Congress for the New Urbanism--watch this space for exhaustive updates!--this was my one chance to Bike to Work.

Sad to say, today was a disappointment, Bike to Work Weekwise. Programmers have doubled--tripled?--down on the commuter rides which were a small draw last year. This year, in addition to the two rides to Downtown, there were six rides from various parts of town to Collins Aerospace, a longtime partner in things Bike to Work Week.

2018: Pit stop on the Collins campus

Collins Route 4 riders were scheduled to leave from Bever Park on the southeast side near my house at (gulp!) 6:45. I gamely got up, donned the Sag Wagon shirt I scored at last year's afterparty...

All dressed up and ready to go

...with rubber bands to keep my pant legs away from the bike chain...

...and got to Bever Park with time to spare, only to find...

Bever Park in the morning light

...no bikers at 6:45. As I rode around the park looking for some, I found five people walking dogs, and one guy in a truck opening gates, but no one on a bicycle other than me. After ten minutes of quiet contemplation, I returned home. Had the Grinch stolen Bike to Work Week?

1st Avenue entering Downtown by the
Cedar Valley Nature Trail crossing

I decided to go Downtown to meet the incoming riders, as I had done last year. The first person I met was Ben Dattilo, who works at Collins Aerospace as well as being a member of the city's Active Transportation Advisory Commission. He was the entire Collins Ride 1 group, having no takers on the 12 mile ride in from Hoover Park on the far southern edge of the city.

A little while after Ben went on his way to work, Downtown Ride 2 came down the Cedar Valley Nature Trail from the northeast side.

Haley Sevening bikes to work

Haley Sevening from the city's Community Development Department was also riding alone. "Hopefully the weather ticks a couple degrees warmer the rest of the week," she told me later, "and we get some more folks joining!" There is warmer weather ahead, but there are also such things as gloves. A Silver-Level Bike Friendly Community ought to be turning out more cyclists than this on a day like today!

Do I have suggestions? Well, if I were smart, I'd be rich, or at least have more than two people at my New Bo Open Coffee meetups. I think Bike to Work Week in the 2020s could work on visibility, funding, and a sense of occasion. 

1. Organizers need to start fires under their friends, for if they can't sell it to their friends, how will they sell it to the rest of the city? Half a dozen cyclists on a group ride on a weekday morning is many times better than one, and is a start towards more and larger rides.
2. Are there organizations who could lend members and maybe some funds? The Downtown SSMID, for example, or Main Street, Physicians Clinic of Iowa, the Cedar Rapids Kernels, ...
3. We could use some celebrity presence. Ten years ago, Mayor Ron Corbett was a regular part of these events. I gather our current mayor isn't into this, but what about musicians, athletes, CEOs, and other Cedar Rapids-famous people?

Tuesday, May 12: Not working, still biking!

Thursday, May 14: Bentonville (Arkansas) bike tour with CNU

The rest of the week looks like this:

Tues-Chain Reaction Bike Hub volunteer night

Wed-Bike to Lunch, Bike Camping Basics workshop

Thu-Meet Me at the Market bike ride

Fri-Handlebar Happy Hour at Kickstand 

The Ride of Silence will occur the following Wednesday, May 20.

LAST YEAR'S POST: "Bike to Work Week 2025," May 12-16, 2025

SEE ALSO: Kevin Duggan, "City's In-House Program Proves Speed Governors Work," Streetsblog NYC, 12 May 2026

Iowa's Legislative Session Ends, To Everyone's Relief

 

Some of us have to live with the consequences of
another legislative session

(5/7/2026) Iowa's public approval of President Donald Trump has dipped to 42 percent in 2026, according to the World Population Review; that puts us only slightly above the national average, and in the middle of the pack of states. That's pretty remarkable, given that our politics have flowed bright red since the 2014 cycle. We can't even gerrymander our congressional districts to help Republicans, because they already hold all four U.S. House seats. Yet early polling--which should be read tentatively, as the election of 2026 is six long months away--shows Democrats with a legitimate shot at the governorship, as well as one or more U.S. House seats, and if that's the case, they might capture a house of the state legislature for the first time in over a decade.

That might account for the particular intensity of the legislative session just concluded. Members of the Democratic minority reported a chaotic closing weekend. My senator, Liz Bennett, reported on the final Saturday morning:

In 12 years, this is the worst and most disorganized I've seen the Iowa legislature. Over 24 hours in this building, here overnight, HOURS between votes, and some of the mot important bills haven't even been agreed upon yet. The majority party (who is in control of the entire government) should've adjourned last night, allowed people to rest while their leadership got things together, and called legislators back when they were ready.

Another senator, Art Staed, a member of Corridor Urbanism back in the day, told KCRG-TV:

This Session was under Republican leadership only, Republicans fighting amongst themselves while the rest of the Capitol suffered. Iowans also suffered with very little public input into these final bills.... Drafters were making mistakes which caused delays. I am absolutely certain we will need to correct some of these poorly thought-out bills next Session (which doesn't begin until January 2027). Why on earth were we working on all of those policy bills that late in Session? Should have been focused on the budget and key areas only.

Once legislators were back on the floor, one Republican bill sponsor cited the source of his information as "AI."

Republicans seemed especially eager to consolidate their policy gains and remind their supporters that their hatred for other people remains as unbridled as ever. A more constructive approach might have been to show that they recognize and care about economic, health, and environmental problems affecting the state, especially the parts of the state where their support is strongest. But maybe it's too late for that.

This is what they did this year at the Capitol (more coverage and longer lists at Barton 2026, Opsahl and Draisey 2026):

• Clear public good 
• water quality initiatives [definitely a problem, though questions about adequacy and whether a restart is better than pursuing previous policy cf. Dorman 2026]
• funds for pediatric cancer research, requiring radon mitigation systems in new homes
• better access to subacute mental health care
• Helping their friends
• tax exemption for nuclear power companies
• shifts money from school districts to charter schools
• omnibus agriculture bill including tax relief and increased support
• bans Chinese, Russian, or North Korean ownership of health care facilities
• looser training requirements for foster parents, regulations on homeschooling
• allows health care practitioners and organizations to opt out of procedures for reasons of conscience
• state officials can carry firearms anywhere on Capitol grounds
• Sticking it to people they don't like
• "three strikes" minimum sentences for prior criminal offenders
• forbids local governments from enacting civil rights protections beyond what's in Iowa code, or issuing identification cards, or having revenue growth above 2 percent
• limits access to abortion drug mifepristone
• restrictions on WIC and SNAP benefits
• requiring universities invest in state innovation programs
• English proficiency required for truck drivers
• Limits lawsuits against farmers for greenhouse gas emissions
• removes availability of HPV vaccine to minors without parental approval
• restricts access to bail

At the end of this session, we're at the same place when I wrote this last year, or when I wrote this in 2019. Iowa faces persistently low economic growth, despite cutting taxes every year. Incidence of cancer is increasing. Population is growing slowly, but in most of the state it's shrinking. Educated young people are leaving the state. Add on global issues like climate change, economic inequality, and control of new technology. Yet year after year, session after session, our Republican-dominated legislature pulls this grandstanding.

Maybe electing some Democrats will focus everyone's minds. Maybe it won't. It could be that, as Jonathan V. Last argues on a national level in The Bulwark this week, American politics has become so "enshittified" that any policy action to improve the "user experience" has become politically impossible.  It could be argued that any party with a 33-17 edge in the state Senate and a 67-33 edge in the state House, 16 years in control of the governorship, along with control of almost every executive position, is doing something right. And yet things don't get better.

NEWS COVERAGE:

Tom Barton, "Five Issues That Defined Iowa's 2026 Legislative Session," Cedar Rapids Gazette, 4 May 2026

Robin Opsahl and Brooklyn Draisey, "The 2026 Legislative Session is Over. Here's What Passed, Failed, and What is Already Iowa Law," News from the States, 4 May 2026

Strategic Parking Plan

Free on-street parking (free with two-hour limit),
New Bohemia, October 2025

(4/29/2026) The City of Cedar Rapids is taking a realistic approach to parking issues in the "Core Four" neighborhoods (Downtown, Czech Village, New Bohemia, and Kingston). Business owners and customers have complained about the difficulty in finding parking; parking finances are not self-sustaining but have required annual subsidies from general funds; and new residential and hotel construction promise to put new pressure on available parking spaces.

Convenience survey results: Parking is hard

Those spaces, for the record, number 7230 in this area: 2010 on streets and 5220 off street (surface parking lots and parking garages), not including privately owned parking lots. 

Public attends a Strategic Plan Open House,
Cedar Rapids Public Library, 28 April 2026

The city and its consultants are to be commended for not trying to solve problems by increasing parking capacity in this area. Space devoted to cars--180 square feet per car, unless you want to go bigger for today's gigantic vehicles--is space that can't be devoted to places to live or visit. They create additional distance between those places, making walking more burdensome, and by not being of themselves financially productive, waste valuable space in the city. These costs and tradeoffs are not widely appreciated by the public, in my experience: "I don't like paying for parking" was overheard at Tuesday's open house.

Parking capacity and vibe are mortal enemies

The Strategic Parking Plan's Presentation of recommendations states four main goals:

• Enhance Economic Development: By optimizing parking and mobility, we aim to support local businesses and attract new investments. 

• Improve Customer Experience: We are committed to making parking and mobility more convenient and user-friendly for everyone.

• Provide Cost-Effective Solutions: Providing public parking in a manner that is both financially sustainable and efficient.

• Expand Mobility Options: Leveraging existing assets to offer diverse and accessible mobility choices.

Open house poster on using data to inform policy

Connected to these are numerous recommendations and timetables, which I've distilled to five, because you are a busy person and any list longer than five makes my head hurt.

1. improve customer experience (ease of payment, finding parking lots) (pp. 11-13, 29-30)
2. ParkCR management of Czech Village parking lots (p. 15)
3. create open parking spaces through two hour limits, more enforcement and raising rates at high-demand places (pp. 19-22, 25-27, 31-33)--straight out of the Donald Shoup playbook!
4. Create Resident Parking Permit program (p. 23), so people who live in the district won't have to compete for space with visitors
5. financing and maintenance e.g. parking fees are not self-sustaining, the Five Seasons Ramp (400 1st Ave NE) needs maintenance stat (pp. 36-40)

Cyclists roll by Five Seasons Parking Ramp,
Downtown, May 2025

The plan also recommends further exploration of (1) a Core Four Shuttle for "park once" environment (p. 16); and (2) building a 2. parking ramp in New Bohemia (p. 17)

If the plan works, there will always be spaces available for anyone who arrives in the area to shop or make deliveries, though shoppers may have to pay for the privilege. This may make shopping in the core a more pleasant experience, though that might not overcome the resentment about paying. Shoup recommends devoting the revenue from parking fees to district improvements, which may tend to reduce the intensity of opposition, but that can only happen if there's revenue left over after we pay staff and perform regular maintenance of the facilities.

Increasing enforcement, raising fines
(which were $3 when I first moved to Cedar Rapids)

This difficulty remains, however: People are in the core of the city either because they already live there, or because they have chosen to travel by car, bicycle, walking, or bus.

Bicycle parking at the downtown farmers' market,
Greene Square, June 2025

More construction of apartments and condos may produce more in the first class, but because of the large doughnut of emptiness that surrounds the core, there aren't enough people close enough to rely on cyclists or pedestrians. The bus is not frequent or convenient enough to bring many people, either. Core district businesses rely on people arriving by car. Until and unless the city addresses this--maybe by using parking revenue to improve bus service and cycle paths?--parking in the core will be unsolvable, even by the greatest minds. 

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post said that ParkCR manages the large parking lot on 17th Avenue in Czech Village. Thanks to an alert reader who pointed out that is only a recommendation at this stage.

SEE ALSO:

"Book Review: Paved Paradise," 20 June 2023

"I Wish This Parking Was...," 27 November 2020

Donald Shoup, The High Cost of Free Parking (Planners Press, 2005)

Brian Tabick, "Cedar Rapids Considers Changes to Parking in Four Core Neighborhoods," KCRG-TV, 28 April 2026

My urbanist journey

As a child, I loved to color maps,
or copy the ones in the phone book with tracing paper

I

(4/22/2026) My urbanist journey began when I taught a first-year course on place at Coe College in 2008. Or maybe it was earlier? I have loved maps since I was tiny (see above). But it was teaching a course at Coe on the Sense of Place that led me to a semester-long study on sabbatical in spring semester 2013....

temporary downtown library

...where I kept running across books on the topic of urban design.

I had found my people! I began a blog to sort out all these new (to me) ideas...

...and here we are! On Holy Mountain, I pay a lot of attention to design issues, both in my hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and in places where I travel, particularly where I'm able to spend a good deal of time in one place, like Washington, D.C. (spring 2018)...

Our street, February 2018

...and Belgrade, Serbia (May2022).

Our street, May 2022

II

Urbanism is a movement of architects, planners, and others that has its roots in a number of ideas that came together as the Congress for the New Urbanism in 1993. I joined CNU in 2020, and have been a member of Strong Towns since whenever they started having memberships.

Coming next month! Watch this space for live coverage!!

The thread that runs through all of the ideas that comprise urbanism is a critique of auto-centric development, which took off in this country after World War II.

Memorial Boulevard runs through downtown Providence RI

Sprawl occurs when a metropolitan area relies on low-density housing developments, located far from place to work, connected by vast networks of highways. Atlanta, Houston and Los Angeles are famous for their sprawled layout and awful traffic, but it's plenty visible even in older cities like Chicago, and certainly has occurred in Cedar Rapids albeit on a smaller scale.

Collins Road NE, Cedar Rapids

One year I sorted out the main urbanist critiques this way (relevant questions are from a list at Alden 2015):

1. Community: sprawl separates people and makes it harder to be neighbors to each other (Jacobs 1962, Jacobson 2012)--how do we built stronger social networks?
2. Lifestyle: sprawl forces people to drive wherever they're going, and to spend a lot of time in traffic--can we improve walkability so that people have more time and transportation choices (Speck 2012)?
3. Environmental: sprawl wastes energy resources, pollutes air and water, and contributes substantially to global climate change--how can we sustain our society at lower environmental cost? (Hester 2006)
4. Financial: sprawl makes cities poor, because they can never collect enough tax revenue to pay for all the infrastructure it requires, and it makes individuals poor, because regardless of means they are forced to pay for expensive transportation--how do we make municipal finances more stable? (Marohn 2020)

Northland Square on Black Friday 2025

New urbanism's response begins with traditional neighborhoods, which form the basis of communities that are (Duany et al. 2010, ch 4; Calthorpe and Fulton 2001, chs 1 & 2, Hester 2006):

1. walkable and human-scaled: safe for bikes and pedestrians, interesting (signs of human activity), comfortable (creating a sense of enclosure with street trees and buildings), with meaningful destinations (Speck 2012) 
2. diverse in population: American writ small, with people from every economic class, race, gender and sexual preference, religion, ethnicity, you name it
3. varied in uses: residences, shops, offices and schools close to each other... sometimes in mixed-use buildings
4. supplied with public spaces that serve as community centers and landmarks, attract different kinds of people, and foster a sense of commonality

St. Paul's United Methodist Church was built in 1914
in the Wellington Heights neighborhood

III

Like all municipalities, Cedar Rapids contains examples of both good and bad urban design. There are no perfect places, but people in every community need to understand opportunities and constraints in setting their goals.

Good urbanism in Cedar Rapids

Connecting the bike trails network

More sidewalks

Parks

Redeveloped core

One way to two way conversions

Bad urbanism in Cedar Rapids

Stroads

Lack of basic commerce in the core

MedQuarter

Casino

I-380 slices through the core
(Google Earth screenshot)

SEE ALSO:

"Gleanings from the New Urbanism," 19 April 2013

"The Urbanism CLEF," 4 February 2016

"Urbanism Review," 22 August 2017

PRINT REFERENCES:

Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton, The Regional City: Planning for the End of Sprawl (Island,   2001)

Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl         and the Decline of the ,American Dream (North Point, 2010)

Randolph T. Hester, Design for Ecological Democracy (MIT Press, 2006)

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Random House, [1961] 1993)... reviewed by Dave Alden here 

Eric O. Jacobson, The Space Between: A Christian Engagement with the Built         Environment (Baker Academic, 2012)

Jeff Speck, Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time (Farrar   Straus and Giroux, 2011)... reviewed by Dave Alden here