Category: Planning and Design

Urban circles echoed with the sound of jaws collectively hitting the floor recently, as the Congress for the New Urbanism made the unexpected announcement that famed architect Robert A.M. Stern would be dropping by CNU 22 in Buffalo to make the case for how the lessons of garden suburbs -- which he explores in his new... Continue Reading

Being back in Albuquerque for a charrette this week, I’m reminded that I still owe you a promised discussion from my last trip to New Mexico, back in December. This time around, I was thinking about my two favorite places to shop in the city -- the historic Nob Hill and the ABQ Uptown lifestyle center -- and what the... Continue Reading

Crossing Campo Street from downtown Las Cruces into the Mesquite Historic District is like crossing between two urban worlds that are often misunderstood. To the west is one of the country’s textbook examples of everything that could go wrong with federally subsidized Urban Renewal, including the obligatory seas of... Continue Reading

High on my list of must-read columnists is James Surowiecki of The New Yorker. His “Twilight of the Brands” piece in the February 17-24 edition provides a good example of how he takes apart outworn axioms of business success, then, from the wreckage, assembles a model better suited for the here and now. (more…) Continue Reading

Last Friday, our nine-year-old came home from school talking nonstop Olympics. He went on for awhile about 2010 medal counts, with Canada taking home 14 golds in Vancouver, the record for any country at Winter Olympics. The deep polar vortex we’ve been trudging through this winter has to have some silver lining, so perhaps... Continue Reading

“We had better get together on this or we’re going to die.” People talk a lot about community these days. How we’ve lost whatever sense of it we might have once had. How we don’t really know each other much anymore. How we yearn for more intimacy, with connection that transcends the typically weak ties of... Continue Reading

New year’s resolutions? Bah. Do what you love. With clarity. Only about 8% of people keep their resolutions for 365 days anyway. So what about if instead, we set out to remove the obstacles to doing the really healthy things we love? Both as individuals and as communities. This line of thinking started the other morning... Continue Reading

Hi. I'm Hazel and I was a Sprawlaholic. If you've been reading awhile you may recall that, with the loving help of my friends and family, I went cold turkey, dumping life in a Florida subdivision for the intense urban charms of downtown Winnipeg. It was a life-changing move with no regrets. Yet, as good as it's been,... Continue Reading

Hi, my name is Hazel, and I'm an addict. For the last 25 years, I've been addicted to a string of takers. Time-draining, money-grubbing, fat-building, resource-depleting, toxic machines. For the last 18 months, I've been clean. Ever since our move to Canada. And this last weekend, I realized I may be cured. (more…) Continue Reading

Throughout my professional career, whenever a new or innovative approach is taken on a development project, its title automatically defaults to that of ‘Pilot Project.’ It occurs so often that I am changing my title to ‘Pilot Project Pilot’ as I would then be involved with pretty much every development proposal... Continue Reading