Will There Be Another 'Urban Reset' and What Will it Look Like?

Kevin Adams predicts a major "urban reset" is on the horizon in the United States. Writing for the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), Adams predicts that organization and its members have been preparing for the next urban reset through mechanisms like form-based codes and neo-traditional neighborhoods. The question Adams raises is whether CNU is prepared for the next great reset.

Before answering the question, Adams provides a history of American resets, starting with the Jeffersonian period before the Industrial Revolution and continuing on to the Mid-20th Century switch to Modernism. Adams predicts the next urban reset is due soon because of modernism's destructive economic tendencies, and when it arrives, he warns of two of threats to the future resembling on that might resemble the Congress for the New Urbanism's vision for the future. As for that vision, Adams writes, "Jefferson’s 1795 Land Ordinance is instructive for the next reset, not in its details but rather in its broad strokes."