Category: Planning and Design
Urban Systems: Integration and the value of intersections
People have an extraordinary capacity for compartmentalization. Sometimes we call it attention span: the ability to focus on one task at a time. Sometimes we call it meditation: the ability to clear your mind. Sometimes we call it cognitive dissonance: the ability to pursue an action when in direct opposition to values.
We... Continue Reading
Category Planning and Design, Public Policy
Get to Know the Awkwardly-Named “Terminated Vista”
I’ll admit it: I wish there was a more user-friendly way to say “terminated vista.”
Perhaps I’m more sensitive to it because, as regular readers here know, I’m not an urban designer. I just work with them. That means I’m more inclined to scratch my head like any other layperson when I hear wonky expressions... Continue Reading
Why 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 complete with the promise of more privacy,... Continue Reading
Designing Regional Urban Retail Centers: Lessons from the Mall and Beyond
As many of us are actively trying to reform car-focused retail into dynamic mixed-use, walkable urban centers, we are quick to point at the mall as the poster child for everything we are trying to reform. But as the heyday of last-century's drive-to mall fades into the past, there are many things that the mall excelled... Continue Reading
Tags Geoff Dyer, Robert Gibbs
Eisenhower Memorial Controversy Puts Focus on Urban Design
How do we honor our heroes?
The current dust-up over Frank Gehry’s proposed Dwight D. Eisenhower memorial has brought the issue, and the conversation, to the forefront. Within it has been some well-articulated opposition from prominent urbanists, including this from Léon Krier, this from Dhiru Thadani and this from... Continue Reading
Category Architecture, Planning and Design
Life as I’d Like It To Be
Absorbing the Norman Rockwell exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery over the past four weeks, it’s extraordinary to witness one artist chronicling one nation over seven decades, from 1916 to 1978.
For more than half of his career, Rockwell was constrained by racism that dominated the nation, forcing him to depict... Continue Reading
Category Planning and Design, Public Policy
Cutting Edge, All-Purpose Comp Plan: Free (conditions apply)
Pssst! You say you need a comprehensive plan? On the quick and on the cheap?
If you pay retail, it can cost you tens of thousands, maybe millions, depending upon how many layers of wonk and weasel language you layer in. And it can take years. But I can offer you the best one you’ll ever get for free and for less time... Continue Reading
(Public) Space: The final frontier
Today I offer a quick study relating cities of the US West to Leon Krier's decidedly European Public Space Quantity Ratio.
(more…) Continue Reading
Category Development, Planning and Design
Smart Growth = Smart Parenting, Part Two
I’m a parent so, not surprisingly, I’m always on the lookout for intersections between that and my work in community design. The last time I considered the issue, I was thinking at the level of the neighborhood and exploring how walkable, mixed-use, mixed-product environments help parents combat a host of contemporary... Continue Reading
Category Development, Planning and Design
The Social Network: Community Edition
Likes. Friends. Followers. We’ve got hundreds of ‘em. Plus, LinkedIN for professionals and Google+ for, uhhhh, well, for someone and then all kinds of iPhone texting, FaceTime, email, and Skype-ing. Who has time to make a phone call anymore?
In trying to understanding and leverage the power of our wired social networks,... Continue Reading