• More storefronts, more jobs

    Earlier this week, we introduced the Storefront Index , a measure of the location and clustering of customer-facing retail and service businesses. A primary use of the index is to identify places that have the concentration of retail activity that we generally associate with a vibrant neighborhood...Read more

  • Spurring investment in an immigrant neighborhood

    Southwest Detroit is the kind of neighborhood that few people talk about outside of the Motor City. The community is not one of those that are vacant and dilapidated—the subject of "ruin porn" photos on the web. It's also not booming with development like Downtown and Midtown. Aside from small-...Read more

  • The progressive roots of New Urbanism

    The movement against urban freeways and slum clearance during the 1960s and 1970s was primarily negative. It opposed modernist projects that threatened existing neighborhoods. With a few exceptions, it did not develop new methods of urban design to replace modernism. In the 1980s, however, the New...Read more

  • From Ideas to Action: Cheaply, quickly, fairly

    Last week, sociologist David Brain outlined strategies for a Lean charrette , which is a work-in-progress concept designed to match up with Lean Urbanism strategies. Opportunist that I am, I welcome that as an excuse to try Part 2 of the charrette discussion I offered here . Also, there’s this:...Read more