• From parking lot to urban tour-de-force

    Urban design and architecture on a leftover parcel bring a campus and a Los Angeles neighborhood closer together.
    For the University of California in Los Angeles, UCLA Weyburn is more than just graduate student housing. The 500-unit apartment block and community building ties together a fragmented part of the university’s campus, realizing the vision of a thirty-year-old master plan. Built on what was formerly...Read more

  • The real ‘Bilbao Effect’

    Gehry's Guggenheim museum itself did not make the difference—rather the new public realm attracted and kept people and businesses in Bilbao.
    Note: This article is part of a collaboration between Island Press and Public Square on a series of articles based on recently published books on subjects related to urbanism. The question 'What makes a great city?' is not about the most beautiful, convenient, or well-managed city; it isn’t even...Read more

  • Occupy Main Street

    Great Barrington’s Main Street should be a place where place people want to get out of their cars to shop, eat, and socialize—under a canopy of trees. That’s not what state departments of transportation build, however.
    An old Chinese proverb says, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” In other words, it’s not too late to fix the economic and social problems the recent rebuilding of Main Street brought to town. Great Barrington’s Main Street has lost the curb appeal that...Read more