 |
| 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.
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.
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.
 |
| Children's section, Bentonville Public Library |
 |
| 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 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
