This suburb is a growing place, but it's not a successful place. It risks becoming an increasingly isolating place full of people who are cut off from the economic mainstream.
Read More
Can a humble corner bookstore make your city wealthier and more resilient? These small businesses have surprising staying power—and in many ways are an indicator species of a strong neighborhood.
Read More
Sandpoint, Idaho eliminated its downtown parking minimums 10 years ago. Since then, at least four projects that could not otherwise have happened have brought new vibrancy and economic productivity to downtown.
Read More
Professional planners are trained to yearn for tighter urban design controls, as if cities without comprehensive, top-down planning would devolve into chaos and disorder. In reality, cities evolve according to mechanisms that allow us to gradually discover optimal urban design across time.
Read More
America is addicted to cars. But what if we weren’t? How could cities utilize the many acres of suddenly empty parking lots? City planner Alexander Dukes looks ahead to life after parking.
Read More
Giving valuable space in cities over to cars isn’t great for building walkable or productive places. But for now at least, our urban neighborhoods need some parking. This an area where thoughtful design can help us solve multiple problems at once.
Read More
It’s easy to claim “We have too much parking” but to prove it? These Boston area planners were up to the challenge, surveying over 200 apartment buildings’ parking lots. What they found… might not shock you.
Read More
The answer might not be what you expect.
Read More
California’s high-speed rail project appears indefinitely on hold. What is the opportunity cost of all the things the state hasn’t done during the decade-plus its leaders have spent fixated on this?
Read More
The suburban development pattern is not inherently too costly to maintain: early suburbs sat much lighter on the land, with narrower streets and less public maintenance obligation. Let’s take a look at how the American suburb has evolved over time.
Read More
Why build a downtown transit system if you’re just going to close it at peak demand?
Read More
Sandpoint, Idaho eliminated its downtown parking minimums 10 years ago. Since then, at least four projects that could not otherwise have happened have brought new vibrancy and economic productivity to downtown.
Read More
We’ve gotten very good at keeping traffic off of neighborhood streets. But at what cost to our cities?
Read More
The Iowa Department of Transportation helps educate the public with this video explaining why reducing an urban street from 4 to 3 lanes can be a win-win for drivers and pedestrians.
Read More
We need to solve our housing affordability problems, but not by ignoring context and embracing “orderly but dumb” means.
Read More
Historically, a decentralized, trial-and-error process was how cities “discovered” which urban design features worked best for their own circumstances. Let’s look at the evolution of front setbacks in New York to understand how this works.
Read More
Professional planners are trained to yearn for tighter urban design controls, as if cities without comprehensive, top-down planning would devolve into chaos and disorder. In reality, cities evolve according to mechanisms that allow us to gradually discover optimal urban design across time.
Read More
Can a humble corner bookstore make your city wealthier and more resilient? These small businesses have surprising staying power—and in many ways are an indicator species of a strong neighborhood.
Read More
When building our cities, we have come to value efficiency over redundancy. Want to see this become a problem? Just wait until it snows.
Read More
For a struggling city, negative perceptions from with the community can send it into a spiral of decline. It takes a major shift in perspective to get the city back on track.
Read More