A Placemaking Journal

As 2025 draws to a close, we find ourselves feeling deeply grateful.

Grateful for the people we’ve worked alongside, the communities that trusted us with their stories and aspirations, and the places that continue to teach us (sometimes quietly, sometimes insistently) what really matters.

This past year has reminded us that progress in cities rarely comes from one grand gesture alone. Instead, it often comes from accumulation: small acts of care, modest interventions, and repeated choices that make daily life a little easier, healthier, and more humane. When those choices stack, they create momentum. They create trust. They create what we might call an upward spiral.

There’s a question the American psychologist and philosopher William James once posed that captures this idea beautifully: Do you sing because you’re happy, or are you happy because you sing? His insight was that action often precedes feeling. That by doing the thing, we create the conditions for the emotion to follow.

Cities work the same way. We don’t wait for happiness, health, or optimism to appear before we design better places. We design better places, so those outcomes can emerge.

Happiness, not as an abstraction, but as form

Over the years, we’ve written about the relationship between happiness and urban form, not as a feel-good slogan, but as a serious planning question. Our Urban Happiness series explored how street design, access to nature, walkability, social connection, and everyday dignity shape how people feel in their own lives and neighborhoods. Happiness, we’ve learned, is not just personal. It is spatial. It is cumulative. And it is deeply influenced by the environments we create together.

The biggest little thing, and then the next one

One of our favorite phrases, thanks to our colleague Ben Brown, is the idea of doing “the biggest little thing:” the most impactful action a city can realistically take with the time, money, and political will it has right now.

This approach builds confidence. It builds trust. It shows that change is possible.

And then, once that trust exists, we do the next biggest little thing.

This is the heart of what we mean by upspiraling: designing systems where small, achievable improvements make the next improvement easier, not harder. It’s also the foundation of the Lean Urbanism movement, which calls for right-sized regulation, incremental action, and human-scale experimentation over paralysis by perfection.

The full spiral: from incremental to transformational

It’s also important to be clear about what we are, and are not, saying.

In some cases, a city’s “biggest little thing” isn’t little at all. It’s grand. Transformational. Full zoning replacements. Comprehensive rewrites of subdivision regulations. New policy and physical plans that realign land use, transportation, housing, and public space. These efforts represent the top of the upspiral, the XL version of Lean Urbanism. When cities have the time, resources, and political will to undertake them, they are the gold standard.

These moments matter. They reset systems. They unlock long-term capacity. They create durable alignment between vision and implementation.

At the same time, we know from experience that many communities are not always in a position to make such leaps all at once. Political cycles, staffing constraints, fiscal pressures, and immediate crises often limit what is feasible in the short term. But the absence of ideal conditions does not mean the absence of opportunity.

Upspiraling offers a way forward when comprehensive change is not immediately possible. By acting at the scale that is available (doing the biggest little thing now) cities can build trust, demonstrate results, and create the momentum needed to support larger reforms later. Incremental action is not a substitute for transformation; it is often the path toward it.

Standing still rarely preserves the status quo. More often, it allows existing problems to deepen. Movement, even at a modest scale, keeps systems learning, adapting, and oriented toward better outcomes.

Nature as essential urban infrastructure

Again and again, we see that some of the most powerful upspiraling interventions are those that bring nature back into daily urban life. 

Trees along a street. A pocket park. A trail broken across fresh snow. A place to sit, breathe, and notice the seasons.

Nature integrated into walkable urban places supports physical health, mental health, social connection, and resilience, for people and for the planet. These are not amenities. They are foundational systems for wellbeing.

Optimism as a discipline, not denial

Another voice that has long shaped how we think about progress is psychologist Martin Seligman, whose work on learned optimism reminds us that optimism is not about ignoring difficulty, but about challenging pessimism when it becomes reflexive or paralyzing. As Seligman has written, “Pessimistic beliefs are usually inaccurate, and optimism can be learned.” His work encourages us to doubt automatic negative conclusions and to test them against evidence, possibility, and agency.

This distinction feels especially important in the context of the affordable housing challenges facing so many cities across our continent. The scale of the problem can make positive outcomes feel unrealistic or even naive. It is easy for pessimism to harden into the belief that solutions are impossible, that markets are broken beyond repair, or that regulation and finance are immutable forces rather than human-made systems.

And yet, again and again, we see that progress begins not with certainty, but with clarity.

Zoning upgrades. Land banks. Community land trusts. A mix of public, private, and philanthropic funding sources. Incremental Development Alliance bootcamps. These are not silver bullets, but they are tools. When paired with careful, transparent pro formas that make visible the real impacts of existing regulatory structures, they help bring into focus where and why financial gaps are being created. That clarity is not discouraging; it is empowering. It transforms an abstract crisis into a set of specific, addressable conditions.

Optimism, in this sense, is not a feeling. It is a method. One that insists problems are worth understanding deeply, because understanding is what makes change possible.

Putting numbers to the return on place

Alongside stories, lived experience, and on-the-ground practice, we also know that decision-makers need clear evidence. That’s why www.codescore.org exists: a compilation of 135 reasons why livable places deliver.

Code Score brings together research, metrics, and real-world outcomes to help put numbers to the return on investment of place. It shows how walkability, compact urban form, access to nature, and human-scaled design contribute not only to happiness and health, but also to economic resilience, fiscal sustainability, and long-term public value.

In many ways, Code Score complements the upspiraling approach we’ve described here. When cities invest in the biggest little things that improve daily life, the returns compound: socially, economically, and environmentally. Code Score helps make that case clearly, credibly, and accessibly, reinforcing what so many communities already feel in their bones: that livable places deliver, again and again.

Looking ahead to 2026

As we look toward 2026, our wish is simple but ambitious: good health.

Good health for people: in bodies that can move comfortably, minds that can rest, and communities where belonging is visible and felt.

Good health for place: in streets and neighborhoods that invite care, activity, and stewardship rather than stress and avoidance.

Good health for the planet: through choices that honor limits, restore ecosystems, and recognize that human wellbeing and ecological wellbeing are inseparable.

We remain optimistic, not because challenges are small, but because we’ve seen how much can change when cities focus on what is doable, humane, and cumulative.

To return to William James: we don’t wait to be happy before we sing. We sing, and happiness follows. Likewise, we don’t wait for perfect conditions before we act. We act (thoughtfully, incrementally, and with care) so that healthier, happier cities and towns are more probable.

Thank you to everyone who has been part of this work with us in 2025. We look forward to continuing the next chapter together, one biggest little thing at a time.