• Thirteen characteristics of walkable neighborhoods

    A checklist of physical qualities of walkable neighborhoods was enumerated by Dhiru Thadani in The Language of Towns and Cities.
    A few weeks ago, real estate professional Mike Hathorne posted 13 physical characteristics of neighborhoods on LinkedIn, which he paraphrased from Dhiru Thadani’s 2010 tome, The Language of Towns and Cities: A Visual Dictionary . I sent the list to Thadani, who endorsed the wording and sent images...Read more

  • Watertown plans main square transformation

    A proposal could add thousands of housing units to the City center, while making it more walkable and sociable.
    The heart of Watertown, Massachusetts, located between Boston and the car-oriented suburbs, has long been blighted by cut-through traffic. The historic public space of Watertown Square, near the Charles River, is bounded by five lanes of heavily trafficked asphalt on two sides. Consequently, the...Read more

  • New model for sprawling Georgia county

    The town center at Trilith creates a walkable downtown in the rural/suburban county 20 miles south of Atlanta.
    Located across from the largest film production studio on the East Coast, Trilith in Fayetteville, Georgia, offers a new model for housing in a county dominated by low-density sprawl. Designing a mixed-use town in this environment presents challenges, notably building walkable urbanism while...Read more

  • A pedestrian’s reckoning with a car-centric culture

    Seeing the world through the eyes of a pedestrian who has to walk everywhere reveals perspectives that drivers never notice.
    Ten years ago, I experienced what felt like the worst punishment imaginable: my car keys were taken away. Not because of a ticket or illegal activity, but due to a medical condition that made driving unsafe. In a culture built around the automobile, losing access to a car was more than just a...Read more