• What New Urbanists can learn from The Villages

    We've learned how to design a good block. It's time for new urbanists to focus on the block party, says Fernando Pages Ruiz. The Villages have mastered that aspect of community building.
    Note: Fernando Pages Ruiz and Andres Duany will discuss lessons from the Villages in an On the Park Bench webinar on July 15, at 12 noon ET. The Villages, Florida, is the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States. That fact alone should prompt attention from planners. But there’s a...Read more

  • Making urbanism easier through regulatory reform

    A flurry of Texas measures will streamline approvals and reduce costs for compact, mixed-use urbanism. Here’s how it is being done.
    The housing crisis is inspiring creative land use regulatory reforms at the state and municipal level that align with good urban planning. Recent reforms in the Lone Star State “could drastically change the face of development” in Dallas and other Texas cities, according to Dallas-based developer...Read more

  • The power of an imaginative illustration

    Three decades ago, a man with a pen proposed a park in downtown Providence, showing that artists can be powerful planners.
    DPZ CoDesign conducted a charrette in downtown Providence , Rhode Island, in 1992, sponsored by the City and the Coalition for Community Development. The talented artist Charles Barrett, who passed away in 1996, worked for DPZ. As described in the recently published The Art of the New Urbanism (...Read more

  • Orange Code adopted to repair Orlando sprawl

    The Orange Code, the largest sprawl repair code ever, applies form-based regulations to unincorporated areas of the Orlando region and streamlines entitlement processes.
    The “Orange Code” was adopted in early June for Orange County, Florida—perhaps the largest form-based code (FBC) adopted in the US by population. Orange County, which includes Orlando, simultaneously adopted the Vision 2050 comprehensive plan . The code covers land containing approximately 900,000...Read more