• Not New Urbanism, nor a ‘small town’

    I was looking through the recent report, The Best Small Towns to Live Across America , published by Stacker . This kind of real estate list attracts attention, sucks you in like an awards show (which places did they pick?), and is based on nothing very real. Stacker engages in “data journalism,”...Read more

  • Building rehabs revive main street

    The character of Georgia Avenue, a historic Atlanta main street, was preserved while injecting new life into a neglected neighborhood.
    Atlanta is more or less divided into quadrants by major Interstates—I-20 and I-75/85—that meet downtown in a tremendous spaghetti junction. Just to the east of I-20 a large sports complex created a “zone of neglect” along an adjacent historic main street, Georgia Avenue, serving the Summerhill...Read more

  • Preserving history, allowing for growth

    A neighborhood in Atlanta establishes a Historic District with land-use regulations that protect the architecture in the front of the lot while allowing extensive development in the back.
    Residents of Atlanta’s Poncey-Highland neighborhood, just east of downtown Atlanta, are looking to the future with an eye to the past. For the past year, neighborhood stakeholders worked together to use the City of Atlanta’s Historic Preservation Ordinance as a tool to create an innovative Historic...Read more

  • Agricultural Urbanism takes shape

    The British Columbia town of Southlands combines New Urbanism with a connection to farming.
    The concept of Agricultural Urbanism was articulated for 530 acres in Tsawassen, British Columbia, in 2008. The plan was formed in a charrette just as the Great Recession hit the brakes on the worldwide economy. Designed around preserving most of the land for food production, this large new town...Read more