• The housing shortage and structural costs of sprawl

    This graph shows why housing is getting so expensive. Annual housing production in the US plummeted in the 2010s, with annual single-family construction just over half of what it was in the 2000s, according to a report Top Cities for Real Estate Development . Although multifamily held its ground in...Read more

  • New urban plan for prominent Amtrak site

    An eight-acre site in New Haven, Connecticut, offers the chance to repair damage by 20th Century urban planning.
    A charrette last week culminated in plans for a redevelopment of a former public housing site in New Haven, expected to add 1,000 to 2,500 new living spaces, mixed-use, and a major square next to an important Amtrak Station. The eight-acre vacant site is now an unimpressive entry to the city for...Read more

  • Public housing transformation promotes urbanism

    Founded on a solid design framework, the North Downtown Athens plan extends the city's heart with mixed-use, walkable, affordable development.
    Nearly 30 years ago, new urbanists established design standards for HUD’s HOPE VI program, the largest remake of public housing in the nation’s history. Although HOPE VI wasn’t perfect, the design principles have endured. The program also showed that the nascent New Urbanism was not just for the...Read more

  • Competing against suburbia

    Why New Urbanism hasn’t caught on more as a reliable model of development and two potential solutions to this problem.
    If urbanists, academics, and planners agree that New Urbanism and Traditional Neighborhood Developments (TNDs) are the best form of residential development, why are so few projects actually being built? For the past three years, I have been working as a partner alongside my dad as we design,...Read more