Category: Architecture

Next time you open the website of a smart growth organization, take a look at the images it features. Chances are you’ll see at least one older neighborhood street with a variety of businesses and/or homes in small to medium-sized buildings. That’s partly because such scenes contain some of the key attributes — such... Continue Reading

There’s an app making the rounds right now called BePresent. Its premise is refreshingly honest. Rather than scolding users for being glued to their phones, it acknowledges what everyone already knows but rarely says out loud: we’re chasing dopamine. So the app tries to redirect that chase. Less scrolling, more living. Continue Reading

Across the United States, cities are grappling with housing shortages and the challenge of revitalizing underutilized spaces. Vacant malls, abandoned factories, shuttered schools, and empty churches often sit idle, wasting valuable potential. But these structures don’t have to remain relics of the past. Through adaptive... Continue Reading

Every month or so, we add to our collection of lessons from livable places. These are the neighbourhoods where walking the streets and looking carefully at the urban forms provide insights into what makes for lovability over time. Today, I’d like to consider Beuvron-en-Auge, deemed one of the most beautiful villages... Continue Reading

If you’ve been following our work here, you know we have a soft spot for Katrina Cottages and the neighborhood design movement they inspired. And you also know some of us -- okay, me -- have been grumpy about the way Tiny House talk has sucked oxygen out of the discussion of small scale homes in small scale neighborhoods. Continue Reading

In Chuck Wolfe’s absorbing new book, Seeing the Better City, he encourages readers to think with our eyes and communicate with visual imagery in order to improve our cities. With the proliferation of smartphone cameras and an endless array of easily accessible, web-based platforms on which to display them, virtually... Continue Reading

We often blog on the benefits of nature integrated into urbanism and wellbeing outcomes of walkability. The real trifecta is when walkable urbanism, human-scale architecture, and nature come together via placemaking. A recent study from the University of Warwick points out that a scenic view delivers equal health benefits... Continue Reading

Shortly before this essay's original posting, I participated in a terrific conference called From Main Street to Eco-Districts: Greening Our Communities, hosted by a chapter of the American Institute for Architects in Corning, New York. Held a block off of Corning’s own, magnificent “Main Street” (actually... Continue Reading

New Urbanism, by definition, is style neutral. Its focus is getting the form -- the urbanism -- right but then letting the architecture be what it may. That’s not to suggest, of course, that many New Urbanists don’t have very strong feelings one way or the other. Many do. Particularly as it relates to traditional... Continue Reading

I’ve never been much of a fan of the Tiny House movement, which seemed to me to be a solution in search of a problem. Squeezing marginally comfortable living space into something you can haul around with a truck didn’t seem to be much of a design challenge. After all, there’s a whole industry that’s been addressing... Continue Reading