National Town Builders Association

04/06/2026

The last day of the NTBA international trip took place in Querétaro, where the Laws of the Indies could be read less as a static grid and more as a durable civic framework: connected plazas, promenades, religious and civic landmarks, and streets scaled for public life. The city’s 18th-century aqueduct—74 monumental arches that remain the defining symbol of Querétaro—offered a powerful lesson in how infrastructure can become identity, beauty, and urban legibility all at once. After a day studying colonial architecture, modernity, and city design, the group returned to San Miguel de Allende for a festive closing dinner, overlooking the city’s rooftops and towers.

02/06/2026

Day 3 in Mexico! The NTBA contingent travelled from Atotonilco’s sacred architecture into the urban core of San Miguel de Allende, where the lessons shifted from monument and landscape to streets, plazas, blocks, and building types. Seen through the lens of the Laws of the Indies tradition, San Miguel offered a powerful study in civic space, walkable urbanism, and the courtyard typology — where buildings turn inward for shade, privacy, craft, and social life while still shaping a continuous public realm at the street. For town builders, developers, architects, and urban designers, the day revealed how preservation, human-scaled frontages, mixed uses, and enduring architectural patterns can keep a historic city both beautiful and alive.

01/06/2026

Day 2 of this year's international trip opened with a roundtable on lessons from Guanajuato—how terrain, civic space, tunnels, alleys, and small-scale retail can work together to make a city memorable, walkable, and economically alive. Before leaving, the NTBA contingent climbed to Monumento de Pípila for a final bird’s-eye view, reading the city as builders, developers, architects, and urban designers: plazas, roofs, streets, and hillsides interlocked into one extraordinary urban fabric. Then it was on to San Miguel de Allende—starting with a memorable dinner in the city center to begin the next chapter of the Mexico Immersion.

28/05/2026

Building on the success of NTBA’s 2024 International Immersion Trip to England, the 2026 Mexico Immersion began this week in Guanajuato – a World Heritage city and living case study in town-building, architecture, and urban design. From its plazas and courtyards to its winding hillside streets and remarkable underground river-and-tunnel network, Guanajuato shows how topography, infrastructure, culture, and civic life can shape an unforgettable urban experience. Just as instructive is the city’s fine-grained pattern of micro-retail and small storefronts, showing how lean, neighborhood-scaled commercial uses can animate daily life and strengthen the walkable urban fabric.

21/05/2026

SEASON 4, EPISODE 1 - OUT NOW: https://youtu.be/oCKeP2-CgZI?si=DYpCvi9rFumCIGgj

We're thrilled to announce that the Townbuilders podcast is back! In this season's inaugural episode, host Levi Wintz sits down with Jan Sramek, CEO and founder of California Forever—one of the most ambitious development projects in the United States today. The plan is to build a new walkable city for more than 400,000 residents in Solano County, northeast of San Francisco, anchored by a world-class manufacturing park and the largest shipyard in America. In this conversation, Levi and Jan discuss how he raised a billion dollars and quietly assembled 70,000 acres, how the traditional urbanism of American cities like Charleston and Savannah has inspired the design, and what phase one of building a city from scratch actually looks like. Check it out, and we can't wait to share the rest of the season with all of you over the coming months!

Also available for listening on:
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/1RCyEER8Vj3bAABbnNdCTJ
Apple - https://apple.co/4fDWskn

27/04/2026

24/04/2026

Another great day of learning and exploring in Richmond at the Spring Roundtable! Our members hit up Carytown, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts campus, and Monument Avenue, spotting some great urban art and lots of inspiring missing middle housing typologies.

11/02/2026

Congratulations to NTBA member (and ex officio member of the board) Rob Parker on his appointment to Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Seaside Institute!

chair…

07/02/2026

31/01/2026

Apply for a scholarship before midnight March 7: https://ntba.net/resources/scholarship/scholarship-application/

Attention next gen Town Builders! We are accepting applications for scholarships to attend the 2026 NTBA Spring Roundtable! We will be welcoming up to three students, graduates, and/or young developers to the Richmond, Virginia roundtable happening April 22 to 25, 2026. Apply to experience a new place, meet leading town builders from across the country, and learn lessons to help inform your future projects. These scholarships are provided in honor of the late Jackie Benson, David Scheuer, Ian Gillis, and Lou Marquet, past NTBA Members and Directors who personified the mission of the NTBA.