A New Home for Build a Better Burb
CNU will take over stewardship of Build a Better Burb
Build a Better Burb was originally founded by the Rauch Foundation as a civic planning design competition held by the Long Island Index. Since then, it has grown into a comprehensive platform for understanding and implementing cutting-edge suburban design and sprawl retrofit strategies. The goal of the program was to empower its users to help create change in their own community.
The Foundation conceived of Build a Better Burb with the hope that its stewardship would one day be assumed by a larger organization that could incorporate it into a broader set of complementary initiatives. That day has arrived.
“By integrating Build a Better Burb into CNU’s existing infrastructure of innovation and debate, we can not only better support the exchange of ideas and best practices but significantly increase the number of retrofit projects being built across America.”
We are excited to announce that Build a Better Burb will become an in-house program of the nonprofit Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU). The Rauch Foundation will work with CNU to transition Build a Better Burb to its new home.
“This partnership between CNU and the Rauch Foundation will elevate and accelerate the amazing work done through Build a Better Burb and bring its accomplishments to a national audience,” said Lynn Richards, President and CEO of CNU. “By integrating Build a Better Burb into CNU’s existing infrastructure of innovation and debate, we can not only better support the exchange of ideas and best practices but significantly increase the number of retrofit projects being built across America.“We couldn’t be more proud to have CNU taking over the stewardship of this program,” said Nancy Rauch Douzinas, President of the Rauch Foundation.
“We created Build a Better Burb as a bold statement for Long Island—to try what we hadn’t tried before, to learn from what others had gotten right, and to demand beauty and thoughtful design in our community. Now, it’s time to present that challenge to an international audience.”
As a program of CNU, Build a Better Burb will maintain its brand and the outstanding suite of case studies, strategies, and resources for which it is known, bolstered by the expertise and energy of CNU’s diverse global membership. The program’s offerings of content and resources will expand and offer a range of implementation tools for municipalities, professionals, and citizen advocates.
CNU members have defined and promoted suburban design and retrofit strategies in North America for decades, from June Williamson supporting the Long Island Index’s efforts on suburban retrofit from which Build a Better Burb has evolved, to former CNU board chair and Georgia Tech professor Ellen Dunham-Jones’s research and advocacy.
“With communities across the U.S. contemplating how their 20th Century suburbs will age,” said June Williamson, a CNU member and national expert on suburban design, “sprawl retrofit and better suburban design are at a watershed moment. Integrating Build a Better Burb into CNU will unlock countless resources and open up an accessible powerful platform for leaders, designers, developers, and advocates for better suburban placemaking.”