About CNT

The Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), in collaboration with King County Metro Transit, developed this Right Size Parking calculator and website. As part of the Right Size Parking project, CNT completed a literature review and developed the research design, conducted the statistical analysis, and created a model to estimate parking per unit ratios for multifamily residential developments across much of western King County. With much input and beta testing support from King County, CNT developed this interactive web tool to illustrate the research findings and allow users to access and implement the model.

CNT is a creative think-and-do tank that combines rigorous research and analysis with effective actions that offer paths to scale. We have tackled a wide range of issues, always with an eye toward simultaneously improving the environment, strengthening the economy, and advancing equity. Our work, especially in the areas of housing and transportation, energy, water, and climate change, garnered us national attention and a reputation as an economic innovator and leader in the field of creative sustainable development.

Mission & Programs

CNT’s mission is to build more livable and sustainable urban communities. CNT fulfills this mission by developing and applying strategies that make more efficient and effective use of the undervalued resources in and inherent advantages of the built and natural systems that together create the urban environment. CNT views urban areas not as the source of economic and environmental problems, as some believe, but rather a potential solution. Urban areas offer unparalleled efficiencies, social and intellectual capital, economic resources and physical characteristics that can be marshaled and put to better use. These assets, however, often lie dormant—undervalued, underutilized or completely unrecognized by market and institutional structures. Land sits vacant. Infrastructure, both built and natural, is underused. Social capital idles. CNT works to harness these assets, ensuring that the marketplace values them, and that communities and households in need can capture some portion of that value and realize tangible economic benefits.

CNT works across disciplines and issues—including energy, transportation and land use, climate change, and water—and engages in three primary activities:

• Researching & analyzing urban problems and developing information resources, including web-based tools, to change how residents, policymakers and market actors understand and act in response to those problems.
• Designing and operating economic development ventures to address those problems in innovative ways.
• Building coalitions to advocate for public policies that could help solve those problems.

CNT is home to two nonprofit affiliates:

• CNT Energy, which develops innovative new initiatives to help consumers and communities control energy costs and reduce energy use.
• IGO™ CarSharing, a membership-based car-sharing organization that provides hourly rental of a fleet of cars located across Chicago and, increasingly, its suburbs.

CNT has a strong reputation as a leader in promoting urban sustainability—the more effective use of existing resources and community assets to improve the health of natural systems and the wealth of people, today and in the future. CNT is a recipient of the 2009 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.