• ‘Grand Boulevards’ promoted for affordable housing on commercial strips

    Two studies show the enormous potential for housing fronting underutilized commercial strip arterials.
    HDR and Peter Calthorpe are promoting the idea of Grand Boulevards, commercial arterials redeveloped with dense, mixed-use housing and bus rapid transit (BRT), as a solution to the nation’s housing crisis. I wrote about this idea in 2024 after a Calthorpe presentation at CNU 32 in Charlotte, North...Read more

  • Alleys and (re)urbanization: Repairing broken urban form

    The body of literature is growing, but alleyways remain underresearched and underutilized assets for American reurbanization. Regardless, these latent spaces already complete many of our favorite cities.
    While only comprising an exceedingly small footprint in urban areas, different flavors of alleyways add livelihood and functionality to cities across the world. Yokochos in Tokyo, wynds and closes in Edinburgh, minor streets/mews in Philadelphia, laneways in Vancouver and Melbourne, Montreal’s...Read more

  • Bicycle-oriented development, a promising regional growth strategy

    The Razorback Greenway is already influencing growth in Northwest Arkansas, but this may be only the beginning. Other regions are taking similar steps.
    In Bentonville, Arkansas, I recently witnessed bicycle-oriented development (BOD) in action. The Razorback Greenway is a 40-mile multi-use trail, mostly completed in 2015, that connects all of the major cities in the region. At first, the Greenway was just a recreational trail. Then it morphed into...Read more

  • Playa Vista: High density, happy residents

    A quarter century after the iconic Los Angeles development was launched, a community survey shows high levels of resident satisfaction.
    Playa Vista in Los Angeles was one of the most ambitious and artistically stunning early New Urbanist plans, designed in a 1989 charrette by two of the movement's founding firms. A major developer, Maguire Thomas Partners, called DPZ CoDesign, led by a young Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk...Read more