From June 1 - 4, 2006, Providence, Rhode Island, will host the nation’s premier annual gathering dedicated to advancing the New Urbanism. This year, the attention of the Congress will turn to a timely theme: Developing the New Urbanism.

CNU XIV: Developing the New Urbanism will focus on implementation and will highlight the role of the New Urbanist developer. Development is the choreography of diverse disciplines, many of which have been advanced by the New Urbanism. Until this point, however, CNU has not devoted enough attention to New Urbanist developers and to the ways in which we can best infuse New Urbanist principles into the development process. CNU XIV will shift the focus from those who plan and design to those who implement, so that we may begin to systematically increase the numbers and quality of those practitioners who develop New Urbanist buildings and places.

CNU XIV will examine the promises and pitfalls of New Urbanist implementation. XIV will reconsider the developer and development process from a community-building and place-making perspective. CNU XIV seeks to enrich the thinking, practice, process and values of developers - and of all New Urbanist practitioners - as we collaborate to make better cities, towns, and regions.

Providence: Unparalleled urban fabric and a new spirit of urbanism
The CNU XIV host city, Providence, is New England’s second largest city and home to just under 200,000 people. It’s a city with a diverse ethnic heritage. This state capital of our nation’s smallest state is blessed with one of the richest arrays of 19th and early 20th century mercantile buildings in the United States. In fact, it is the only major city to have its entire downtown listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A potential pedestrian paradise, with narrow, intimate streets and ornate, well-crafted buildings, Providence’s compact, highly walkable and beautiful historic downtown core possesses all the elements for rich and diverse urban life.

New Urbanist developer, CNU veteran, and Chair of the CNU XIV local host committee, Buff Chace, with his Cornish Associates development firm, is engaged in the final stages of an intense period of transformative adaptive re-use development of a contiguous collection of historic downtown buildings. This large-scale yet fine-grained urban redevelopment project is creating the critical mass of revitalized buildings necessary to push Providence’s downtown revival into the next phase: the creation of a vital downtown residential live-work neighborhood in the heart of the city’s historic arts district. Congress attendees will have the opportunity to visit and examine this and other models of development within and around Providence and New England.

At CNU XIV you will have the opportunity to explore Providence’s rich historic streets and diverse neighborhoods, appreciate its beautiful urban environment of riverfront parks and nearby coastline, experience its contemporary creative energy, its acclaimed arts and cultural scene, and in short discover for yourself what lies behind the buzz about Providence. In addition, there will also be organized tours to Boston, Nantucket, Newport, Mashpee Commons on Cape Cod, and a number of other New England communities.