10th Anniversary Post: Can Cities Change Their Luck?

 

The hit 90s TV series Friends was a harbinger of the "back to the city" years:
Where are today's "friends" living?

(6/13/2026) Ten years ago this month, I looked back on what had been the best ten years for American central cities in a long, long time. By 2015, the "back to the city" movement that had been growing for decades had burst into full flower. From 2005-2015, the U.S. population grew by 8.4 percent; the combined population of the central cities of the 51 metropolitan areas with more than one million population grew almost exactly the same (8.2 percent); however, this masks a wide variety of individual experiences. Using the crude measure of central city population to measure progress, I classified these 51 cities into four categories: 

• STARS (at least double the US population growth 2005-15): 14 cities
• ABOVE AVERAGE (exceeding US population growth rate): 12 cities
• BARELY KEEPING UP (increasing but at less than the national rate): 11 cities
• FALLING BACK (losing population over the period 2005-15): 14 cities

The three fastest growing cities over this period were (1) Charlotte, North Carolina 35.4%; (2) Austin, Texas 35.0%; (3) Raleigh, North Carolina 32.1%. The cities at the top mostly reflected the knowledge economy that emerged along with the Internet, so they were the ones who were most successful at attracting the technical professionals that starred in the new economy. Most were found on the coasts or in the Sun Belt of southern states. (See the map at Saunders 2026b.)

Public Square, Cleveland in 2017

The three biggest losers of population between 2005 and 2015 were (1) Detroit, Michigan -23.6%; (2) New Orleans, Louisiana -14.3%; (3) Cleveland, Ohio -14.1%. New Orleans's decade began with the horrors of Hurricane Katrina; the other cities in this category tended to be older industrial cities in the North which had been stars of the midcentury economy but now were known as the Rust Belt.

U.S. Census data for the ensuing ten years show continuation of some cities' previous experiences, whether positive or negative, while other cities saw interesting changes. From 2015-2025, the U.S. population grew somewhat more slowly, adding 6.6 percent. There are now 56 metropolitan areas of more than a million population in the United States: We've added Tucson, Arizona; Fresno, California; Grand Rapids, Michigan; Omaha, Nebraska; Tulsa, Oklahoma; and Greenville, South Carolina. At the same time, the New Orleans metropolitan area fell under a million, but I left it in the dataset. 

Significantly (I think), the total population of these 57 central cities increased only 3.0 percent between 2015 and 2025, less than half the growth of the U.S. overall, and a very different experience from the previous ten years. There were fewer "stars" and more in the middle categories. Interestingly, the number of cities losing population was very slightly less, though eight cities gained between 0 and 1 percent, which barely put them in the "barely keeping up" group.

STARS (13+): 8 cities	ABOVE AVG (6.5-13): 15 cities	BARELY KPG UP (0-6.5): 21 cities	FALLING BACK (<0): 13 cities
Orlando FL 23.2 Jacksonville FL 17.2 Charlotte NC 16.6 Greenville SC 16.6 Seattle WA 14.7 Atlanta GA 14.1 Okla. City OK 14.0 Salt Lake City UT 13.4	Raleigh NC 12.2 Tampa FL 12.1 Miami FL 11.1 Columbus OH 10.2 Nashville TN 10.2 Omaha NE 10.1 Kansas City MO 9.6 Sacramento CA 9.3 Las Vegas NV 9.0 Providence RI 9.0 Denver CO 8.5 Richmond VA 7.7 Austin TX 7.6 Fresno CA 6.8 Phoenix AZ 6.6	Buffalo NY 6.4 Indianapolis IN 5.6 Cincinnati OH 5.3 San Antonio TX 5.3 Minneapolis MN 4.7 Houston TX 4.4 Louisville KY 4.3 Washington DC 3.2 Grand Rapids MI 3.1 Tucson AZ 3.1 Tulsa OK 3.1 Dallas TX 2.3 Pittsburgh PA 1.1 Boston MA 0.9 San Diego CA 0.8 Chicago IL 0.4 New York NY 0.4 Philadelphia PA 0.4 Portland OR 0.4 Riverside CA 0.2 Virginia Beach VA 0.2	Hartford CN -1.6 Rochester NY -1.8 Los Angeles CA -2.6 San Jose CA -3.6 Detroit MI -4.1 San Francisco CA -4.5 Cleveland OH -6.3 Milwaukee WI -6.3 Memphis TN -7.0 New Orleans LA -7.0 Birmingham AL -7.8 Baltimore MD -8.3 St. Louis MO -11.9

Some factoids from this pile of data:

• Three cities were in the fastest growing group in both periods: Charlotte (+57.9% from 2005-2025), Seattle (+36.7%), and Oklahoma City (+35.5%).
• Nine cities lost population in both periods: Detroit (-26.8% from 2005-2015), New Orleans (-20.4%), Cleveland (-19.6%), St. Louis (-19.2%), Birmingham (-15.4%), Baltimore (-11.4%), Memphis (-9.3%), Rochester (NY) (-2.4%), and Hartford (-1.9%).
• Atlanta, Georgia dropped 1.4 percent in the first period, then leapt up 14.1 percent in the second. Salt Lake City, Utah moved up two categories, from "barely keeping up" to "stars."
• San Francisco, California increased 17 percent in the first period, but dropped 4.5 percent in the last ten years. Five other cities moved down two categories: Boston, Massachusetts; Portland, Oregon; San Antonio, Texas; San Jose, California; and Washington, D.C.

Mural, North Beach, San Francisco, 2014

Each one of those cities has a particular story to tell. And the next ten years promise new stories: Some Midwestern states--not Iowa, alas--have experienced increases in people moving in from elsewhere in the United States ("More People Coming" 2026). The Trump administration's success at strangling international migration to the United States will continue to impact cities even after Trump has left the scene.

All of this leads to the question: Is the urbanist moment over? My post ten years ago optimistically pointed to widespread success among central cities, with potential lessons for the less successful ones. Or do the experiences of the last ten years reflect broad adjustments (limits to growth, sectoral changes in the economy, changes in societal preferences in response to the pandemic, new TV series, or something else)? (Another possibility is that all these findings are altered by changing the unit of analysis to parts of cities, cf. Sanders 2026a).

Betting things will turn around soon?
Cleveland, Ohio has a downtown casino, and soon so will Cedar Rapids!

ORIGINAL POST: "Can Cities Change Their Luck?" 20 June 2016

My Grand Day Out: Iowa River Landing and the Peninsula Neighborhood

The Landing: Apartments with first floor retail, Iowa River Landing

Ten years ago, Ben Kaplan criticized Coralville's Iowa River Landing development as having the design of an urban area but without the connection to or from other places that is essential to urbanism: Iowa River Landing is not well connected to anything outside of Iowa River Landing. While, from certain angles, the place looks urban, it's really just a glorified shopping mall with very expensive condos and apartments perched above.

East 2nd Avenue shops and street parking

Today, Iowa River Landing remains easy to send up. It's a faux urbanist shopping mall of a type I've seen in other places as well. The streets are narrow and relatively quiet even amidst crowds of shoppers, but the handsome brick buildings are full of high-end franchises. LuLuLemon is next to Anthropologie is next to J. Jill. (Do I understand what I have just written? Reader, I do not. Maybe you could try Google Translate?)

View from Midnight Coffee: high end East 2nd Avenue shops

Iowa River Landing is drive-to urbanism with a vengeance. Nevertheless, there are two ways of getting to Iowa River Landing, whether for a shopping spree or for a hockey game...

Xtream Arena is home to the Iowa Heartlanders

...besides driving. The Coralville Transit Facility is located on Quarry Road in Iowa River Landing, which means you're connected by bus both locally and, via the 380 Express, to Cedar Rapids. (That's how I got there.)

The 380 Express stopping at Coralville

Another way is by bike trail. The Iowa River Trail runs from the edge of Iowa River Landing, across a former railroad bridge, to the Peninsula Neighborhood. It took me about 20 minutes to walk from the hyper-bougey stores to the quirky and lovable houses.

entrance to Iowa River Landing Wetland Park

trail bridge across Iowa River

Looking back at Iowa River Landing

Thornberry Dog Park at the edge of Peninsula

Peninsula is a new urbanist-inspired development that was built over a decade ago. It is a residential subdivision, missing many checks on the urbanist checklist. There are very, very few commercial destinations, and no schools, offices or houses of worship. 

And yet, I really liked it. And the connection to Iowa River Landing is not just theoretical: a father and daughter I saw at the coffee shop (Midnight Coffee, part of a regional chain) at Iowa River Landing turned up later walking home down McCleary Lane in Peninsula.

The Peninsula features a mix of detached houses,
row houses and multifamily housing

Apartments on McCleary Lane form the southern edge
of the development

garages face alleys not streets

A bus stop on the neighborhood square is served once an hour by Iowa City Transit, which gets you to downtown Iowa City in 10-20 minutes depending on the destination, and as of current date is free to ride. Four people got on with me just afternoon, which is way more than I've ever experienced at the bus stops near my house.

bus stop where the #6 bus comes once an hour

Across the street from the bus stop is the only commercial building, which contains a ramen restaurant open only in the evenings, a fitness studio open by appointment, and an empty place where a coffee cafe used to be.

Behind the bus stop: Emma J. Harvat Square Park

Hayek Park is named for a former mayor,
but if you want to celebrate the Austrian school,
you go right ahead

Both Iowa River Landing and Peninsula contain urbanist elements, although both are not-quite-urbanist. Both were "built all at once to a finished state," in Chuck Marohn's ominous phrase, so they might be quite a sight in about 2040 when things start wearing out. Still, I find Iowa River Landing unappealing and Peninsula very appealing.

Village green, Foster Road

As not-quite-urbanism, Peninsula succeeds admirably. As I wandered around, I saw more people walking--some with dogs on their way to the dog park, but some without--than I typically would on a warm afternoon in my neighborhood. It was pleasant to be there, and I might find reason to return. I probably won't go back to Iowa River Landing, unless I've been poking around the Peninsula and need a cup of coffee.

SEE ALSO:

Ben Kaplan's Peninsula neighborhood video: New Urbanism In Iowa City: The Peninsula Neighborhood

Seg in Iowa City video: The Iowa City Peninsula Neighborhood | Seg in Iowa City | Neighborhood Tour Series

art on the trail

Book review: Building the Cycling City

 

Melissa Bruntlett and Chris Bruntlett, Building the Cycling City: The Dutch Blueprint for Urban Vitality (Island Press, 2018), xiii + 223pp.

(6/2/2026) When the husband-and-wife team of Melissa and Chris Bruntlett toured bicycling facilities in the Netherlands in 2016 on assignment for Daily Hive, that country had a long-standing reputation for cycle commuting, such that North American cities despair of replicating their success. When they expanded their articles into this book the Bruntletts sought not only to describe Dutch efforts, but to show it was not ever thus, and that Dutch transportation policy was made the same slow, uncertain way in which all policy is made.

Political scientist John Kingdon explained transformative policy change as resulting from the rare confluence of widely recognized problems, availability of acceptable policy solutions, and favorable political alignments (see Hoefer 2022). The Dutch city of Rotterdam, heavily bombed during World War II, experienced two such transformations: first, rebuilding on the car-centric North American model (pp. 7-10), and then, beginning in the early 1970s, repurposing much of the street space to make cycling and walking possible (pp. 10-13). Building the Cycling City tries to answer: How did that happen? Could it happen in the towns where we live?

VIDEO: Active Towns riding interview with Rotterdam city staff (1:11:29)

Most of our cities have for decades been built around the movement of motor vehicles, which has made it increasingly difficult, not to mention dangerous, to get around any other way, even for short trips. This has led to bad outcomes, some of which they list at the beginning of the book: "widespread obesity, traffic congestion, climate change, class inequity, social isolation, and budgetary constraints" (p. 1). But, as Kingdon would tell us, bad outcomes don't become policy problems until they are widely recognized as such. The OPEC oil embargo of 1973 was one such catalyst, and an emptied-out downtown district was another, but at least as important in the Netherlands were grassroots campaigns like Stop de Kindermoord ("Stop Child Murder") begun to combat rising numbers of children killed in traffic (pp. 93-94).

Most importantly, the situations were defined as "too many people driving too many cars too fast," instead of locating their sources in oil markets and/or too many children in public spaces. (Looking at you, United States!) The Dutch framing meant countries like the Netherlands sought policy options to slow traffic speeds, and to enable people to use other ways of getting around. Such options are explored throughout, but particularly in chapters two, four, and eight. Dutch bicycle makers have emphasized (upright) functionality over speed or fashion, so "everyday cycling in regular attire" is "a perfectly practical activity, even when carrying an extra load" (p. 29). When cycling infrastructure appeared, more people were willing to use it to commute to work or school. Dutch engineers produced guidelines for designing bicycle networks that are "continuous, recognizable, safe, and intuitive for all users" (Meredith Glaser of the University of Amsterdam, quoted on p. 69).

Bentonville plans to extend trails system to new
subdivisions on the west side of town

Many people with longer commutes have come to use bicycles to get to the train stations, so a system has evolved (described in chapter eight) with massive secure bike parking at one end and low cost rentals (OV-Fiets, which is nationwide) at the other end. While there are no good North American equivalents of this system, metropolitan Atlanta is looking at attempting some variation of it (pp. 164-170).

In Charlotte, the Rail Trail runs directly by
the light rail line (here, at Bland Station)

The final piece of policy action is political support, sometimes from the mass public, and sometimes from key people in positions of power. Importantly, the Bruntletts discuss two cities' experiences in each chapter, one in the Netherlands and one in North America. In chapter 3, we meet Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson, who in 2009 began a program of street improvements by installing separated bike lanes on the Burrard Street Bridge, which is now heavily used by cyclists--nine million trips in 2017. "A few loud critics can make anything look controversial," he told the authors. "It had zero impact on [car] traffic from day one" (pp. 60-61). In chapter five, we meet Jonathan Fertig, an architect and activist in Boston, whose skilled use of social media led to "tactical urbanism" installations that became actual ways of slowing auto traffic (pp. 103-108). In chapter ten, we see people in the Netherlands socializing new residents (immigrants, children) to the cycling culture, as well as similar efforts in Seattle and Auckland. The Dutch experience is exceptional, to be sure, but it is not sui generis. It could happen here, wherever "here" is for you.

Tri-State Trails advocates for trails and bikeways in and around
Cincinnati, and sponsors Breakfast on the Bridge 

Melissa and Chris Bruntlett manage to portray the exceptional efforts of Dutch cities as well within the reach of any North American city that seeks to address traffic deaths and congestion, pollution, and maybe most importantly child development. Framing issues, finding available solutions, and marshaling public support are none of them easy, but they have been and can be done.

Since Building the Cycling City, Melissa and Chris Bruntlett have published two more books: Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives (Island, 2021), and Women Changing Cities: Global Stories of Urban Transformation (Riba, 2025).

SEE ALSO:

Modacity Life website

"Picture Post--Vennendaal," As Easy as Riding a Bike, 3 March 2015

Melissa and Chris Bruntlett explain their 2019 move to Delft on The Good Place (48:12);

10th anniversary post: Thinking Big in Cedar Rapids

 

Dale Todd speaks at Cedar Rapids Public Library, 
May 2016

 "Waterfronts are the rock stars of city infrastructure."--

MATTHEW LISTER, MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR GEHL AMERICAS,  AT CNU34

(5/23/2026) When Dale Todd spoke at a special edition of 1 Million Cups Cedar Rapids at the Cedar Rapids Public Library ten years ago, on behalf of the package of projects known as Destination Cedar Rapids, he was between stints on the Cedar Rapids City Council. Ten years later, those projects are well enough along to show they connect the city in important ways, while the jury's still out on the other big idea pitched that week, MedQuarter.

CONNECT CR

Conceptual picture of the Alliant Energy Lightline
bridge over the Cedar River
(swiped from cedar-rapids.org)

Destination Cedar Rapids is now known as Connect CR, and has been supported by $5 million from the City of Cedar Rapids, an equivalent amount from the Hall-Perrine Foundation, and donation of Cedar Lake by Alliant Energy. The hope is to activate the Cedar River and the man-made Cedar Lake, for as  another CNU speaker, Eric Klinenberg argued, infrastructure like this can serve both functional (flood protection) and social purposes.

plans for Cedar Lake

Cedar Lake required a great deal of remediation, and apparently the leveling of numerous trees as well. (I know one avid birder who can't bring herself to return to what had been one of her favorite spots.) A lot of features, like the shelters and challenge course, remain to be built. It is scheduled to be completed in 2027.

Northern view of Cedar Lake

Yet on a Monday mid-afternoon, people were already using the space, walking and cycling around the lake on the trails, or sitting on benches by the lake.

cyclist on upper trail, taken from lower trail

 It is accessible by trail from the north or from Downtown, though being located across I-380 from neighborhoods it's only walkable for the bold and fit.

You can see Mound View from Cedar Lake, but
the train tracks mean you can't get there from here

Down the trail, the Alliant Energy Lightline bridge will connect the Cedar Valley Nature Trail, as it rolls south of Czech Village, to where development is planned in the New Bohemia expansion. Completion is planned for this fall, when it will be a huge contribution to trail system connectivity. In time it may also and help build a neighborhood south of New Bohemia.

Construction progress as of today: view from the SW side

Cedar Lake and the Alliant Energy Lightline are connected by the Cedar Valley Nature Trail, and highlight our emerging trail system. Together they provide both fun and utility. What is fun and useful for residents also is attractive to visitors (see "The Public Realm" 2026.) City Manager Jeff Pomeranz is quoted on the city webpage: "We need these kinds of special places for our residents, for our businesses, and for our visitors." The page also appropriately notes that entire ConnectCR package is "designed to strengthen connections across our city."

North end of the Lightline Bridge,
from 10th St SE

KCRG-TV report on bridge construction from earlier this month (1:48):

MEDQUARTER

I've said a lot about the MedQuarter in this space, most of it negative, but the fact that very little has changed in its 55 blocks during the last ten years means that good choices are not precluded. Ten years ago I imagined an optimistic scenario in which:

Development creates an important connection between what's happening Downtown and in New Bohemia, and the core neighborhoods of Oak Hill-Jackson and Wellington Heights. This proves a source of sustenance for Downtown and New Bo. Work force housing gets built. Expanded employment opportunities create vibrant, diverse neighborhoods that in turn sustain street life and local businesses. Maybe even: Density gradually replaces the current ridiculous oversupply of parking, while visitors are accommodated by local circulator buses that provide easy transportation between clinics and other local sites.

Looking east from 8th Street and 4th Avenue, 2014

The same view today
(The adorable shrub at the corner was removed after 2021)

Looking at the four parts of the "general theory of walkability" created by Jeff Speck (Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time [Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2012]), the MedQuarter does not perform as well as it should be doing, as close as it is to Downtown.

• safety: Mixed. There are sidewalks throughout the MedQuarter, and converting one-way streets back to two-way has helped with traffic speeds. Design still favors motor vehicles, and 1st Avenue, as well as 7th and 8th Streets near I-380, are not safe for pedestrians or cyclists. The lack of buildings and people, particularly at night, does not help people feel safe, either. 
• comfort: Poor. The streets are wide, with few shady street trees (although 8th Street by Mercy Hospital is a nice exception), and at least during the day a lot of noisy car traffic.
• interesting: Poor. With a tiny residential population and little commerce, there are few signs of life on the street. Most sidewalks are next to parking lots or large buildings.
• useful: Poor. Once you leave the hospital, there are few destinations for walking or cycling: no parks or elementary schools, a couple ethnic grocery stores, a handful of restaurants, the Post Office, an excellent coffeehouse that unfortunately is only open three days a week, a few other places.

The MedQuarter has many parking lots and few places

I think this could be fixed, if anyone wanted to. The three big boys--the two hospitals and Physicians Clinic of Iowa--are there to stay, and their preponderance of out-of-area visitors means parking is always going to be a concern. But it doesn't have to be the only concern. If the MedQuarter develops in a way that facilitates connection between the neighborhoods and Downtown--besides driving through it, I mean--it could strengthen the city socially and fiscally. Besides, car dependence is antithetical to public health. I'm not optimistic that these are considerations for those who wield power over the area, but as of now, it could still happen.

ORIGINAL POST: "Thinking Big in Cedar Rapids," 4 May 2016

CNU 34 Diary: Northwest Arkansas

Hi from the town with the big friendly ball!
Which smiles as it watches, and floats above all

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 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.

People even ride up the Ledger building!

The streets are narrow, and cars drive slowly, and they 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.

Bentonville, like all towns, suffers from vehicle gigantism

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 Lydia 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 his imprimatur since Charlotte in 2023.

John Simmerman recording David Wright of
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 stores around the country.

Marion IA Walmart, Black Friday 2024

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 AI-focused 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

Closing party at the Momentary

There are still some things going on tomorrow, but the curtain rang down on CNU 34 this evening in the form of the closing party at the Momentary, a contemporary art museum that also boasts an event space, the RODE House.

This morning, we had the closing keynote, presented by Eric Klinenberg of New York University, author of Palaces for the People, which I'd just bought yesterday.

Eric Klinenberg at First Baptist Church,
resisting the temptation to perform a drum solo

He talked about the value of playgrounds as a lead-in to advocating consideration of social aspects of infrastructure projects. He's not the only one to notice that America (and much of the West) is in a very dark place right now. As much as we need to modernize water management in an era of routine torrential rains, we also need places that bring people together in order to build community life. Otherwise, we are more likely to "hunker down" in private spaces, which exacerbates social tensions. For example, in addition to pipes that can be overwhelmed by even a couple of inches of rain if they come too quickly, we can benefit from "softscape" like parks and community gardens to "hold" the water until the pipes are ready for it, as well as revitalizing the civic culture while they do it.

He concluded by urging practitioners to "make every project you do work as social infrastructure."

Crossing SE D Street on our walk:
Note the grassy median on 8th Street,
not unlike Mount Vernon Road in Cedar Rapids

From there I went on a walking tour of SW-SE 8th Street led by people from Toole Design, the City of Bentonville, and Walmart. 8th Street has in a very short time become a ferocious stroad, which despite separated bike lanes and sidewalks is not a very comfortable or pleasant place to be. They discussed further infrastructure initiatives, like a new Gateway Park west of I Street with "iconic" bridges across 8th; various ways of reducing conflicts at the intersection with Walton Boulevard; and a "greenway hub" of arts spaces, small shops and cafes across from the Momentary along SE G Street. The tour ended at the Walmart campus, where I was yesterday.

The Razorback Greenway runs through the Walmart campus

I also attended the Chapters Networking Breakfast this morning, where I sat with members of the Minnesota and Wisconsin chapters. Minneapolis will be next year's host city!

Saturday, May 16, 2026

Fayetteville Farmers Market

To wrap up this year's CNU, a number of speakers presented ideas and fielded questions at the Fayetteville Town Center, just off the square where the Saturday farmers' market was going on. The local urbanism dial was set on MAX.

Joe Minocozzi at Fayetteville Town Center

I happened by just as Joe Minocozzi was beginning his presentation. Minocozzi is the founder of Urban3, an Asheville-based consulting firm that helps cities understand and take control of their finances. He's best known for promoting the measurement of taxable-value-per-acre, which puts efficient productivity ahead of sheer size in terms of value to the city. I've used the concept to analyze local issues, such as here and here and here. Today's was an excellent, accessible introduction to the idea, with detailed application to Northwest Arkansas. After the talk, I ran into some friends who love Minocozzi's work, and we commiserated about how difficult it is to get people in and out of local government to accept it. Is it mathphobia? Entitlement? Exceptionalism? I'm going back to a city that is over the moon about our new data centers and the casino.

This conference was a novel approach to CNU. It will be interesting to read and hear people's reflections on regional urbanism, and how it will affect our meeting in Minnesota next year. Since I spent most of my time in Bentonville, I can say that I love a lot of what they've done, but will have trouble drawing many lessons for Cedar Rapids. Bentonville reminds me more of Naperville, Illinois, where I went to college and spent some time after that. Naperville is an upper-middle class exurb, very wealthy, very clean, without a lot of the problems that bedevil cities. Everyone faces limitations at some level, but Bentonville, like Naperville, can do a lot before they hit those limitation. And they can afford to be bolder because mistakes will be less catastrophic.

At the same time, Bentonville had to seek new ways of doing things because of growth pressures, and because Walmart demanded action when it was having trouble competing for talent with places like Seattle and the San Francisco Bay area. Cedar Rapids, whose 2025 Census estimate is exactly 193 souls larger than its 2020 population, faces neither growth pressures nor a sense of urgency to change our way of doing things. 

Ashleigh Walton, incoming CNU president

LAST YEAR'S POST: "CNU Diary 2025: Weekend in New England," 11 June 2025

SEE ALSO: 

"How to Fight Back Against Anti-Urbanism Lies (w/ The Urban Truth Collective)," The Urbanist Agenda Podcast, 24 April 2026

Robert Steuteville, "Urbanists in the Land of Walmart," Public Square: A CNU Journal, 15 May 2026