• Giving thanks in the Anthropocene

    We can be thankful that we are in the midst of a golden age for cities, and their vibrant resurgence colors ominous global trends in more optimistic hues.
    In this season of thanks and celebration, those of us who are architects, planners, builders, developers, and government officials have much for which to be thankful. We wouldn’t be in these fields, if we didn’t care about beauty that is more than skin-deep. The pleasures of architecture and cities...Read more

  • Houston, build the civic space of democracy

    After Harvey, let's rebuild a city that will last for centuries and support healthy social interaction, in addition to getting people out of harm's way.
    We have all heard the Harvey wakeup call. We all know we can’t continue business as usual. We have to change our ways. We will in fact be “the city that floods” unless we stop being the “city of no limits.” Unlike previous storms, every one of us knows personally someone who was flooded out of...Read more

  • To fight global climate change, fight global sprawl

    The drive-through lifestyle, exported by America and adopted worldwide, is the "operating system for growth" that is a root cause of rising carbon emissions.
    A few years back I conducted a little experiment. I went onto a popular image-sharing website to see how difficult it might be to find new drive-through McDonalds restaurants in four different, rapidly-growing parts of the world: Brazil, India, China, and Eastern Europe. My goal wasn’t to look at...Read more

  • Why climate change is now front and center

    The most critical opportunity for urbanists is to step up to the magnitude of the climate challenge.
    25 years ago, many of us we were in this same room, having already spent four years talking and planning for the first congress. We assembled a coalition of interested but uncertain allies and curious onlookers, all drawn to the potential opportunity to confront and combat suburban sprawl. At that...Read more