• When planners walk on the wild side

    The playful genesis of a new walkable urbanism geometry that seeks and explores walking trails in town and at the urban-natural boundary.
    “You never really feel like you’re building trails out here … Only finding them.” — Lawin Mohammad “Like with a mandala or a labyrinth … I circle and pass similar points along the way, discovering slightly altered variations on a familiar theme … perspectives deepened, elaborated and embroidered,...Read more

  • Food trucks and people friendly cities

    What can the humble food truck teach us about Urbanism?
    Walking home after an afternoon class one day at my alma mater, UW - Madison, I decided to walk through Library Mall. Library Mall is a pedestrian-only plaza surrounded by public buildings: two libraries (shocker I know), the UW bookstore, a church, and several other university buildings. From...Read more

  • Pacello Placemaking Fellowship established

    Submit ideas by July 31 for cash grants for innovative, catalytic urban projects on any scale.
    A fellowship has been created in the name of the late Tommy Pacello, a widely admired new urbanist planner and attorney who led the Memphis Medical District Collaborative until he died in the fall of 2020 of cancer. The fellowship will extend grants—likely ranging from $5,000 or $10,000—to...Read more

  • A wall rises in Buffalo

    Even a city that is getting better makes mistakes, such as a massive concrete wall around a development in a city where population and urbanism are growing.
    In early March, 2020, days before the entire nation came to a sudden pandemic halt, I was in Buffalo, New York, for a charrette co-sponsored by CNU. It was brutally cold—as Buffalo can be in winter—and that may have contributed to my poor judgment (it’s hard to think clearly about urbanism when...Read more