Suburbia was an experiment—an experiment in the service of building lots of housing very quickly.
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The trajectory of these Jersey supermarkets is a microcosm of how the suburban experiment altered small towns, turning them from tiny cities into suburban lifestyle accouterments.
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Small-scale, incremental development works in the suburbs too, if we let it.
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Downtown Leesburg, Virginia, goes car free for one weekend.
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We’ve explored the outside of Fairfax County’s Eden Center before, but what does the inside of this surprisingly fine-grained strip mall look like?
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A visit to a home restaurant in Rovinj, Croatia, shows the kind of small businesses and good urbanism that we could have in the U.S. if we just relaxed our zoning codes.
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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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Despite their layouts, these islands of apparent urbanism out in the countryside are a sign that we’re doing something very, very wrong.
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This document shows just how much our arcane land-use regulations prohibit neighborhoods from developing organically and un-self-consciously.
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These two highways in New Jersey run parallel and very close to each other—and traveling along them allows a sustained view of two different development approaches.
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If we’re going to be stuck with strip malls, then this one in Virginia is about as fine-grained and urban as it gets.
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Pedestrians don’t bear primary responsibility for road safety—but to an extent, neither do drivers. These photos illustrate why.
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Our drive continues through the area once called “the ugliest place in Maryland.” When you look around, though, you can find the building blocks for an urban transformation in these suburbs.
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Let’s take a drive down Rockville Pike, a major thoroughfare near DC. What kinds of development patterns will we find as we pass through each ring of suburbia?
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Big, complicated zoning codes create an environment that gives developers no smaller-scale competition.
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We glorify our country’s rough-and-tumble entrepreneurial history, yet we often look down on people who embody it today, and on the commercial landscapes that result.
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It’s no wonder that some people oppose new housing when the housing and infrastructure projects they see are disruptive construction work that drags on for years.
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Our walk together continues on Fairfax Boulevard, where we encounter a much different (i.e., less friendly) pedestrian experience.
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Let’s take a walk together down two different streets, and observe what car-oriented places are like from the viewpoint of a pedestrian.
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What can be done about retail structures when they’re abandoned by their big-box tenants? One solution: break them down into smaller, much more dynamic spaces.
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