• San Cristobal City Hall San Cristobal at night

    San Cristobal City Hall

    Grand new plaza highlights history
    A dilapidated former municipal building, embodying decades of history in the historic Mexican city of San Cristobal, has been converted into a civic museum complete with an elegant and dignified new plaza. “Making the City Hall a museum was an extraordinary shift,” says Susana Utrilla, cultural...Read more
  • Envision Broadway Nashville Aerial

    Envision Broadway

    Better ‘ honky tonk’ urbanism
    Lower Broadway in Nashville is a major arterial in the heart of the famous “honky tonk” district, with restaurants and bars ofering live music. Many modes of traffic, including cars, delivery trucks, buses, taxis, Ubers, and Lyfts, mix and compete with pedestrians, who have inadequate sidewalk...Read more

  • Storrs Center

    A mixed-use center for town and gown
    For a town with a major educational institution—the University of Connecticut—Mansfield was surprisingly short of urban amenities until a few years ago. “Mansfield,” noted Connecticut Magazine , “offered little more than a couple of fading strip malls and a dilapidated restaurant along the...Read more

  • Porchfest, Decatur, Georgia

    Grass-roots culture generates community
    For one warm fall Sunday afternoon, “the most diverse musical lineup of any festival in Georgia,” according to one reviewer, transformed a neighborhood in Decatur, an inner-ring suburb of Atlanta. The streets were taken over by pedestrians and bicyclists of all ages, listening to 134 musical acts—...Read more