We talk with author Jake Berman about the history of rail networks in America’s cities and why our transit systems are the way that they are in the current era.
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Most of your city’s zoning likely prohibits multifamily housing—even of a modest form, like triple-deckers. If so, you have the arrogance of early zoning reformers to thank for it.
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Great ideas are great, but context determines application.
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A compelling new report, Divided by Design, from Smart Growth America examines the tangled history of highway building and so-called urban renewal in the U.S.
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Why is it so hard to imagine removing a 60-year-old freeway from the heart of my city—even as someone who likes the idea?
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Dating back to the 1800s, researchers in the U.S. have challenged the property tax system. So why, to this day, do the richest continue getting a "discount" on their taxes, while the poorest are overcharged?
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Why does Erie, PA, keep giving up more and more of its lakefront to highway asphalt?
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This series of studies of 19th-century development in St. Paul, MN, can help us understand some of the earliest traces of what would later become the suburban development pattern.
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What lessons can we glean from a century-old solution to housing crises?
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New technologies can solve problems—or make them worse. In the chase for technofixes like flying cars, it's important to know when to pump the brakes.
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Good urbanism doesn’t have to mean large apartment buildings or an immaculate row of brownstones; the ad-hoc version on display in this Florida neighborhood is more relevant as a model of adaptation for the rest of us.
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For a city to be “antifragile,” to bounce back from disaster and disruption stronger than it was before, it needs to embrace the lessons of healthy ecological systems.
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A drive through Shenandoah National Park, and a look back at its 1930s creation, offers a glimpse into the early era of American car culture, when motoring was a recreational activity with a lighter imprint on the landscape.
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What are the origins of our current water systems, and how should we think about them, going forward?
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This film makes a human rights case for safer streets, while showing the historic roots of safe streets advocacy in the U.S. and the power of tactical urbanism.
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The idea of a permanent community “character” was an invention of the suburban era, and it's showing its cracks now—because it was never an attainable or desirable goal.
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This interactive map allows you to view just how much space is being wasted in your city (and in the rest of the U.S.) on parking lots.
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What if we could get back large buildings hosting businesses at a hyperlocal scale—and what if that actually helped reduce the sentiment we call NIMBYism?
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Our excessive expansion of the interstate highway system has destroyed urban downtowns—and it’s wiped out many small towns altogether.
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The modern conceit is that we are far more advanced than the people of past generations—but how do our cities really stack up against those of the past?
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