• Planning a neighborhood square

    With a mix of local stores below apartments that provide “eyes on the square,” shade trees, and places to sit, a European-style neighborhood square is a place where everyone belongs.
    Unlike a city’s main square that, from time to time, brings together representatives from all over the city for major festivals, concerts, and special events, a neighborhood square has certain unique social functions: it is frequented every day of the year by those who live in the neighborhood; it...Read more

  • How Jacobs and Alexander unlock 21st Century problems

    Review of Cities Alive: Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, and the Roots of the New Urban Renaissance, a book by Michael Mehaffy.
    I realized soon after I delved into Cities Alive that I was reading an important analysis for urbanism—now and in the coming decades. Those in the land-use planning and development business know the stories of urban renewal damage, the failure of modern urban projects like Pruitt-Igoe, and the...Read more

  • Creating local craft

    The workers at Caribbean Homes and Exports are not only doing meaningful work, but they also command far more value than if they were at the bottom links of the industrial product chain.
    We have become so accustomed to buying things manufactured halfway around the world at everyday low prices that most of us have forgotten the delight of things created by local craftsmen steeped in traditions they have developed over time. These are things you can’t find just anywhere, and the...Read more

  • 25 great ideas of the New Urbanism

    The New Urbanism is a design movement toward complete, compact, connected communities—but it is also a generator of ideas that transform the landscape. Communities are shaped by the movement and flow of ideas, and the New Urbanism has been a particularly rich source of the currents that have...Read more