the Jury

I had the rewarding experience of serving on the CNU New England first annual awards jury on Saturday. We spent the day deliberating at the offices of Cornish Associates in Providence as we reviewed the project entries and chose five winners, grouped by the scale of the region, the neighborhood, or the block, street, and building. The day included excellent debates about specific projects and principles of New Urbanism in general, a nice lunch in the Downcity Providence area, and a tour of the venue for the Chapter reception to be held at CNU XIV in June.


An interesting debate centered around the objective of our awards - are we setting the bar very high, making it difficult for any projects to be worthy especially with the relative lack of New Urbanist implementation in New England, or are we rewarding projects that are heading in the right direction but may have been hampered by resisting abutters, political climate, missing or poorly executed design elements, poor site conditions, etc. My opinion is that we should set the bar high to avoid diluting the meaning of New Urbanism and the value of the awards in the future. Better to not give any awards than give awards to projects that are anything less than great. Luckily, we had five great submittals that I am proud to stand behind.

Here's the jury:


L-R: Jack Davis (publisher, Hartford Courant), Matt Lawlor (lawyer, Boston), Michael Behrendt (town planner, Rochester, NH), Robert Orr (architect, CT), Patrick Pinnell (architect, CT), Carrie Marsh (planner, Portland, ME), David Scheuer (developer, VT), Norman Garrick (civil engineer, UConn), me.

After a long day in Providence it was really nice to take an early train home and relax watching movies for the rest of the night...