Back of the Envelope
Community Reputation: Actions speak
“Don’t dance, drink, smoke or chew, or go with girls who do.” If you grew up in the south, it’s a good bet you’ve heard this one before. In short, reputation is a precious thing. You may show up in church in your Sunday best but, if your actions every other day paint a different…
Read MoreGet Your Offices into a Walkable Town Center!
Leveraging your Town Center for Economic Development So far, this series has taken on three of the essential components of a healthy walkable town center: hotels, retail and multi-family residential. But, traditionally, our town centers were not simply a collection of residences and shops. They formed the commercial and civic centers of our towns and…
Read MoreCollaborative Placemaking Maps
The other day on an urbanism listserv, someone asked for parameters to qualify a new development as a walkable, mixed-used, livable place. While measures like CNT’s H+T Index, Walkscore, and IMI’s Walkability Index go a long way toward measuring, there isn’t a single source that awards the title of Livable New Place.
Read MoreFaçade-ectomy: Preserving the skin of the past
Experiencing the most recent façade-ectomy in Winnipeg has left me asking again the much-debated question of the validity of preserving just the façade of a building. A façade-ecotomy will likely: Lose historic, cultural, architectural significance Waste embodied energy Increase cost of construction over full demolition Increase tax revenues over doing nothing Decrease long term viability…
Read MoreGet your Multifamily into a Walkable Town Center!
Residences: An Obvious Ingredient One obvious yet undervalued ingredient of an effective mixed-use town center is the residential component. To emphasize its importance, I would go as far as to say that it is actually the substrate on which a healthy mixed-use environment is based. In a healthy, balanced region, with the exception of noxious…
Read MoreDon’t Get Mixed Up on Mixed-Use
Taking a break from Geoff Dyer’s series on town centers this week with a refresher course on the simple elements of mixed-use development. Citizens, politicians, and planning officials have embraced the need to allow for walkable neighborhoods across North America and mixed-use is an essential component for achieving walkability. However, the term mixed-use has held…
Read MoreGet Your Shops into a Walkable Town Center!
Shops: Everybody Wants ‘Em Last week we started this series off with Hotels, a sometimes overlooked, value-adding addition to a walkable town center. This week we are looking at one of the essential ingredients of a town center: the retail shops. The retail component of a town center is the most visible component, often defining…
Read MoreGet Your Hotels into a Walkable Town Center!
Series Overview While walkable mixed use town centers may not be the *easy* choice for the asphalt guy, the engineer, or even the developer who has to attract tenants to an environment they may not be as used to… they are certainly becoming best practices for sustainable community development. More importantly, they are quickly becoming…
Read MoreReturn on No Investment
Having worked in communities big and small across the continent, we’ve had ample opportunity to test ideas and find approaches that work best. Urban design details. Outreach tactics. Implementation tricks. Many of these lessons are transferable, which is why we’ve created “Back of the Envelope,” a weekly feature where we jot ’em down for your…
Read MoreThe Strip Mall vs. the Multi-Way Boulevard: In consideration of subtle differences
Having worked in communities big and small across the continent, we’ve had ample opportunity to test ideas and find approaches that work best. Urban design details. Outreach tactics. Implementation tricks. Many of these lessons are transferable, which is why we’ve created “Back of the Envelope,” a weekly feature where we jot ’em down for your…
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