• Reviving the downtown of a hard luck city

    Florida’s first predominantly African-American suburb has been out of the economic mainstream for six decades. A downtown plan that focuses on New Urbanism, affordable housing, and minority business development maps out a better future.
    Founded in the 1920s by aviation pioneer Glenn Curtis, Opa-locka, Florida, had an imaginative beginning, with architecture based on the Arabian Nights. The city six miles north of Miami reportedly has the largest collection of Moorish building design in the Western Hemisphere. The City Hall, with...Read more

  • Building the Beloved Community in Atlanta

    In Martin Luther King Jr.’s home of Westside Atlanta, a nonprofit is partnering with the City and public and private organizations to transform disadvantaged neighborhoods using a new urban design plan.
    “Physical solutions by themselves will not solve social and economic problems, but neither can economic vitality, community stability, and environmental health be sustained without a coherent and supportive physical framework.” From the Charter of the New Urbanism​ Five years has passed since a...Read more

  • Housing ideas for people ‘on the spectrum’

    A report examines the living needs of the millions of people with autism spectrum disorder, and how good building and neighborhood design can help.
    One in 54 children are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), ranging from those with severe developmental disabilities to higher-functioning individuals who used to be (and still are, in some countries) classified with Asperger’s syndrome. The Providence-based architecture and planning...Read more

  • Why Universal Design is critical to CNU

    Too many architects, planners, transportation engineers, and urban designers reduce the ADA to some kind of onerous hurdle that must be leaped.
    As a reporter, marketer, and planner, I have been involved with the Congress for New Urbanism since its founding. I started writing about urban design, growth, development and how cities work and fail in 1988, the same year I married a brilliant attorney and writer who has used a wheelchair for...Read more