• When bad things happen in new urban places

    New Urbanist places sometimes get the reputation of looking like movie sets , especially some of the well-known developments like Celebration (built by Disney), and Seaside, which did serve as a set for the 1998 film The Truman Show (the filmmakers built fake buildings and landscaping to complement...Read more

  • A parking lot and a plaza

    The Memphis Medical District is a 2.6-square-mile area that has gained plenty of jobs, but has lost most of its population in the last 50 years. The area has loads of institutional buildings and surface parking lots, and many underutilized blocks. The city and the institutions are trying to...Read more

  • Valletta cityscape

    This view of Valletta, Malta, by urbanist Dhiru Thadani, drawn from a peninsula that extends out to in the harbor, doesn’t seem to have changed much in centuries. A photo of the same view, easy to find on the Internet, reveals a few telecommunications towers, some motor vehicles, and splashes of...Read more

  • Not hard to design a great public space

    Arcata Plaza, laid out along with the town’s first streets in 1850, was first used to load lumber from the sawmill—and has served as the commercial heart of the Northern California town ever since. Arcata Plaza is a square, literally, and the design is not complicated. A square should not be too...Read more