• When houses go bad

    Do you love to hate the over-the-top residential architecture of outer-ring suburbs?
    Do you love to hate the over-the-top residential architecture of outer-ring suburbs? A new blog called McMansion Hell is worth a look. Kate Wagner, a master's student specializing in architectural acoustics at Johns Hopkins University and Peabody Institute in Baltimore has created a witty and...Read more

  • Urban rail

    In a first world country like America, there is no reason to have a second-rate urban rail system.
    A week ago I got to hear Peter Newman discuss his new hopeful book, The End of Automobile Dependence: How Cities are Moving Beyond Car-Based Planning . This is the final volume in a trilogy by Newman and Kenworthy on automobile dependence. Newman makes the argument that for the first time in...Read more

  • Rear-view mirror predictions on US motor travel

    For most of the 20th Century, US vehicle miles traveled (VMT) rose relentlessly. At the turn of the new millennium, the pattern changed substantially, but the view of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), did not. Above is a graph that shows FHWA's predictions for growth of motor vehicle...Read more

  • Small furry mammals versus the dinosaur

    Over the last six decades, the propensity toward ‘big’ has infiltrated every aspect of human life. People are bigger (or fatter), cars, homes, food production, retail, hospitals, business, industry, government, and cities all have burgeoned in size. This has resulted in vast layers of bureaucracy,...Read more