• Turning a neglected site into four-sided mixed-use

    A development in Edina, a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis, hits a lot of metrics of sustainable planning. Nolan Mains was built on a 2.8-acre site that was previously nearly 100 percent impervious surface—mainly surface parking lots—in a commercial district. Completed in 2019, Nolan Mains has 100...Read more

  • Never mind NIMBY and YIMBY–it’s time for ‘QUIMBY’ urbanism

    We need a major rethink of gentrification and affordability challenges if we’re going to get anywhere. “Quality In My Back Yard” may offer a path.
    Note: Public Square editor Robert Steuteville is on leave from late September through the last week of October, 2022. In the meantime, we are offering some popular articles from 2022 in addition to new content. The urban scholar Jane Jacobs was famous for pointing out that if we don’t understand “...Read more

  • A “15-minute city” underway in the Highlands

    Tornagrain in Scotland sets a British example of planning the “15-minute city.” Designed in 2006 and delayed by the 2008 worldwide recession, Tornagrain has been in vertical construction for the last six years near Inverness, the largest city in the Highlands. Architecture Today , a UK publication...Read more

  • Downtown expansion for Texas suburb guided by vision

    Frisco Square has doubled the size of a historic downtown as the city prepares for regional transit.
    Years ago, I kept a list of new urbanist projects on a neighborhood scale that I updated annually or semi-annually. The last update was December of 2003, when I counted 648 projects, with 369 of them under construction. I stopped maintaining that list because it was growing too big—but more...Read more