• The amazing route diversity of street grids

    A mathematical equation helps to explain the endless variety of cities and the cookie-cutter sameness of conventional suburbs.
    After Public Square published an article on the capacity of street grids to handle traffic, developer Vince Graham sent us a mathematical equation that helps explain their power. Graham calls it the Hawthorne Equation—named for Casey Hawthorne, a math whiz who came up with it—which shows the number...Read more

  • Learning from the past, planning for the future

    Research presented at CNU focused on transportation and architecture, with an eye toward inequality, social justice, and climate resilience.
    During any CNU Congress, its impossible to hear all the information provided or meet all the people who attend. Over several months, Public Square is highlighting people and ideas that CNU 26.Savannah attendees may have missed. The three hundred years of history were evident everywhere you looked...Read more

  • The benefits of bike trails

    Bicycling infrastructure is a suburban retrofit strategy in Northwest Arkansas.
    In an effort to make sprawling Northwest Arkansas more livable, 163 miles of bicycle paths and trails have been built in recent years—including the 37-mile Razorback Greenway that links all of the region’s significant cities. Studies show that bicycling in general provided $137 million in health...Read more

  • Affordability is not a zero-sum game

    A new report by Todd Litman offers a vision for optimal urban growth for affordability and livability—laying down a challenge to Wendell Cox, smart growth critic and author of a widely cited report.
    In a new report , researcher Todd Litman critiques the widely-cited report by Wendell Cox and his firm Demographia, the International Housing Affordability Survey (IHAS) , which was published in January for the 14th time. IHAS gives Cox a platform to argue against housing regulations and what he...Read more