• Vital little plans: Jane Jacobs in the age of global capitalism and rent seeking

    After all these years, Jacobs's thinking still contrasts starkly with the planning and economic orthodoxy of assembling large sites for master development and subsidizing the likes of Amazon.
    Jane Jacobs’ seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities shaped a generation of designers and activists to think of cities as places of exchange and variety rather than as machines for living. Her later work about economies of cities and of nations was equally challenging to orthodoxy...Read more

  • What do ‘Market Urbanism’ and New Urbanism have in common?

    Although market urbanists like walkable urbanism, they often focus on issues that are not at the core of New Urbanism.
    My recent book on sprawl was subtitled: “ The Case for Market Urbanism .” What is Market Urbanism, and how is it similar to (and different from) New Urbanism? Of course, market urbanism is not a movement on the scale of New Urbanism. There is a market urbanist blog (marketurbanism.com), and a few...Read more

  • What's right for the site: Analyzing the missing middle

    The options for missing middle housing on a small redevelopment site are many, so here's a process to decide what choices make sense. Part 1.
    Over the past several years, many clients have come to us wanting to explore Missing Middle Housing on two- to five-acre sites, which seem to be a “sweet spot” for Missing Middle application, especially for smaller developer/builders and for developers of sites within larger master plans. This...Read more

  • Genuine change or lipstick on a pig?

    A well-known new urban project has begun to reshape the relentless sprawl around it, but communities shouldn't wait for that to happen.
    A criticism of Silicon Valley planning, housing, and community culture led to a critique last week of Santana Row , a prominent new urbanist development in San Jose, California. Santana Row is better than the usual Silicon Valley sprawl, but does it represent real progress—or is it merely dressing...Read more