Development
On the Street: The DNA of place and the ROI of movement
The corporate culture of our government has been a carte blanche to keep doing what we’ve been doing. This culture implies that what we’ve been doing works. In business, last year’s income statement is a major driver in this year’s action plan. If a product or service was profitable, then it’s nurtured and grown this…
Read MoreRetail: When it bends the rules and breaks the law.
Getting ready for a TEDx talk in a few weeks, I’ve once again been noticing how the places that I love the most usually break the law. The contemporary development codes and bylaws, that is, which are geared to the car, not to the pedestrian and cyclist. Then last week’s urban retail SmartCode tweetchat with…
Read MoreDo We (Still) Need Vancouver?
A few years ago Urban Guru Leon Krier asked this question — “Do we still need Vancouver?” — at CNU XVII Denver. In response, the Next Generation of New Urbanists invited then-new Vancouver planning director Brent Toderian to speak in favor of Vancouver, which is easy to do. For, since the fall of Hong Kong,…
Read MorePoggibonsi and other Tuscan Lessons
With all the angst over Italy this week, I’m in the mood to count some blessings. To elaborate on some assets. To look at the local marketplace. And to debunk a couple of frequent idealist notions about European urbanism often heard from North Americans. Last month, I was traveling in the Tuscan countryside, which is…
Read MoreMy Right Turn at the Intersection of Good Ideas
When things get tough, people start digging in ideologically, increasingly viewing the world through the lens of their own experiences to fortify their already entrenched positions. Yes, experience counts for a lot and, chances are, they do hold some piece of the larger solution. But as we’ve learned time and time again, things are never…
Read More‘Show Me the Money!’ New bumper sticker for the New Normal?
There hasn’t been a New Urbanist Council gathering for a while. Which is why a lot of pent-up anxiety — and hope — found release in Council sessions in Montgomery, Alabama, October 14-16. These regionally organized Councils are intended to grapple with topics that should be on the table for annual Congress for the New…
Read MoreResources + Connections = Jobs
Jobs come up in every community-building conversation these days. It’s making me go back to the start, to think it through. What created jobs in the first place? Division of Labor. Access to natural resources. Human settlement patterns: cross roads, rivers, oceans, eventually railroads and highways. In the last few decades, many cities have been racing…
Read MoreCan Preservationists Let Love Rule?
Call me naive. When I was first exposed to the New Urbanism in the 1990s, it was as a 9 to 5 ad-man with an appreciation for music and art. Killing time one day in my dentist’s waiting room, I stumbled upon “Bye-Bye Suburban Dream,” the cover story of the latest Newsweek magazine. I still…
Read MoreSpecial Districts Getting All Mixed Up
Recently there’ve been rumblings of a very interesting trend among cities that have adopted form-based codes to guide the character of their neighbourhoods. That is, once a city begins to think urbanistically, they start to solve some really hard problems. And those problems lately have been to do with industrial uses, and how to reconnect…
Read MoreAfter the Flood: Hard choices for communities and citizens
Virginia Republican Eric Cantor, majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, caught a lot of grief for suggesting there should be budget cuts elsewhere to offset the extra federal dollars that FEMA needed to do its job as tornadoes, floods and winds assaulted the eastern U.S. But at least he was being consistent as…
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