• Big questions for Amazon

    Amazon chose urbanism for HQ2, but with urbanism comes responsibility.
    Earlier this month I wrote a piece about the Charter Award-winning plan for Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia, that established a code and vision in 2010—enabling that area to become more walkable and urban as Amazon’s new headquarters is built. That piece analyzed half of Amazon’s East Coast HQ2...Read more

  • Amazon site is Charter Award winning plan

    In Arlington, Virginia, a plan and code for Crystal City entitled the new development capacity that lured Amazon—and also calls for transformation to walkable urban.
    Amazon’s long-awaited second headquarters decision was announced on Tuesday, split between Crystal City in Arlington, Virginia, and Long Island City in Queens, New York. Amazon promises to bring 25,000 high-paying jobs to each location in the next 10 years. Both sites are expensive real estate,...Read more

  • What's YIMBYism? Here's five characteristics

    The Yes in My Back Yard movement pulls from a broad spectrum of people concerned about many aspects of urban places, including affordable housing, mobility, and good urbanism.
    Editor’s note: YIMBY (yes in my backyard) is an phrase and movement that was coined in 2006 in Toronto and spread to many North American cities in recent years in response to high housing costs and what is often reflexive opposition to infill housing. This blog post was originally sent as an email...Read more

  • Town center links USC and South LA

    University builds a transformative development in an area that hasn't seen much investment in recent decades.
    The New York Times calls USC Village, which opened in 2017, "an ambitious test of a public-private partnership hoping to remake a historically underserved neighborhood." The $700 million project designed by Harley Ellis Devereaux creates housing for 2,500 University of Southern California students...Read more