• Choice and the ‘sprawl tax’

    Daniel Hertz at City Observatory introduced what he called the “Sprawl Tax” last week—defined as the cost associated with excess commuting distance for the top 50 metro areas. This distance adds real costs for gas, depreciation, and wear and tear on motor vehicles as well as time spent commuting...Read more

  • Existing assets boost Detroit revival

    Note: This article was written as part of the Project for Lean Urbanism and edited for Public Square . Lean Urbanism will be a topic of discussion at CNU 24 in Detroit taking place June 8-11, 2016. Detroit is a place of intrigue. The dramatic rise and fall of the city over the last half century has...Read more

  • Appreciating small-scale New Urbanism

    For those who are concerned that too many big developers dominate urban revitalization, the Naked Philly blog is an antidote.
    I’m guilty, like a lot of writers, of focusing on the larger projects. Many articles are written on 500-unit mixed-use developments while scores of little urban projects fall under the radar. I recently checked in with the Naked Philly blog, which shows the transformation of a major city in all its...Read more

  • New Urbanism's family values

    Joel Kotkin charges urbanists with being anti-family—but he couldn't be more wrong.
    In The Human City: Urbanism for the Rest of Us , Joel Kotkin makes the case that urbanists are behind the drop in birth rates around the world. Urbanists are implementing policies that discourage child-rearing—with potentially dire consequences, he says in this 200-plus-page polemic. It’s pretty...Read more