Development
Fair Trade Placemaking: Are you being compensated for your choices?
Over a decade ago Andrés Duany of DPZ taught me that, more times than not, NIMBY opposition stems from a sense that proposed development is not of equal or greater value to what would be lost. Tony Nelessen, the inventor of the Visual Preference Survey, confirmed this lesson a few years later when he came…
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 MoreYIMSEO: Yes In My Sphere of Emotional Ownership
Last year about this time I wrote on the subject of NIMBYs and laid out a challenge to the NIMBY nation. It’s time to stop talking about what you don’t want, I said, and start talking about what you do want. In short, it’s time to develop the criteria under which a Not-In-My-Back-Yarder will say…
Read MoreRes Civitas non-Gratis: 21st century public realm
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 MoreThis Just In from CNU20: World not yet saved
The Congress for the New Urbanism’s annual convergence of giganto ideas and fine-grained pragmatism wrapped Saturday night with a party in a bar. The four days in West Palm Beach, Florida, marked the 20th anniversary of such gatherings, most of which also involved spill-over debates in venues with liquor licenses. As usual, the CNU20 agenda…
Read MoreInfrastructure Deficit Disorder: The doctor is in
This past week, Chuck Marohn and Justin Burslie of Strong Towns gave their Curbside Chat in the beloved San Diego neighborhood of Hillcrest. Chuck’s visit was possible through a fun collaboration between Walt Chambers of Great Streets San Diego, Ben Nicholls, Executive Director of the Hillcrest Business Association, and myself. Forty of San Diego’s most…
Read MoreWhy Generation Y is Causing the Great Migration of the 21st Century
Just after the close of World War II, the last Great Migration in the United States — the move from the city to the new suburbs — began to emerge, fueled by new roads, low congestion, and modest energy costs. It was a new beginning, a chance to shake off the past, and it came…
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