We're at a tipping point in how we design and think about our public streets. And things can tip the right way, once we confront the bankrupt ideology guiding our transportation system.
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A lot of supposedly "innovative" proposals are for things that have long existed in neighborhoods, but you wouldn't know it based on the language that planners use.
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The creator of Not Just Bikes, a popular YouTube channel on urban planning, talks about what makes Amsterdam such a great biking city…but why building a biking city isn’t the goal.
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In the history of urban planning and zoning, pretext has often been used to achieve unstated goals, with (at best) questionable public purposes.
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A guide for making your urban spaces more fine-grained.
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Alex Rodriguez and Danny Lapin are incrementally revitalizing a historic space for entrepreneurs, artists and community members in rural Lexington, NY.
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Through concerted and creative efforts to know their neighbors, listen to resident concerns and educate people on the city’s trajectory, these planning professionals are going against the grain and fighting for the city they love.
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How one West Virginia town is giving the City, developers, and residents the flexibility to build a stronger place.
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A lot of bad public engagement sets the impossible goal of identifying the community’s “vision” for a place by asking people about their preferences—usually with questions they’re ill-equipped to answer. There’s a better way.
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Decades into the Suburban Experiment, many towns and cities have precious few old buildings left. Those that remain could be adapted to new uses—but cities are making that hard.
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Too often, city planners defer to “context” in the most superficial way—privileging the massing of buildings over the deeper forces that define a neighborhood’s identity.
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Community consensus sounds nice. But, as a final standard for planners, it ends up supporting the status quo rather than challenging it.
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What’s missing from most comprehensive plans? Dollars and cents. Here’s a simple reform that will focus the conversation on development patterns that create real wealth.
Read MoreA lot of bad public engagement sets the impossible goal of identifying the community’s “vision” for a place by asking people about their preferences—usually with questions they’re ill-equipped to answer. There’s a better way.
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The streetcar suburb was the dominant development type in American cities between about 1890-1930. What lessons can we learn about how to build our cities today?
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Chain stores often claim they can’t break from their standard design templates when moving into your city. Don’t believe it.
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Plano’s first comprehensive plan in 30 years contained good faith efforts to address the city’s looming financial crisis. The city council just scrapped it, reverting to the status quo development approach that caused the crisis to begin with.
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It’s time to shift the power in our cities to bottom-up systems that address urgent needs rather than protect the status quo.
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Put away the Excel sheet and go for a long walk.
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We often talk about cities in vague phrases and buzzwords that obscure more than they illuminate. It’s time to stop.
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