• Conducting a climate adaptation audit

    Here’s a list of 10 steps that communities can use to evaluate risks and adapt to climate calamities, using resilient planning principles.
    How can communities plan to become more adaptable and resilient in the face of climate calamities, such as wildfires, hurricanes, drought, heat waves, and floods? One idea is to start with an audit. Using Jeff Speck’s successful 10-part “ walkability plan ” as a template, I wrote a list of steps...Read more

  • Community has it made in the shade

    Oppressive summer heat is more bearable when a walkable community is designed for shade.
    As a heat dome hovers over the eastern and southern US, the topic of heat and urbanism is especially important. Most people associate urbanism with heat islands—which make urban places hotter—but that’s not always the case. Design choices can cool down urban places and make them more comfortable...Read more

  • Block-scale urbanism adapts historic campus to climate change

    Preserving History: Assessments and Climate Adaptations at The House of the Seven Gables in Salem, MA. Union Studio Architecture & Community Design won a Merit Award in the Block, Street, and Building category of the 2025 CNU Charter Awards.
    The Preserving History project in Salem, Massachusetts, uses block-scale urbanism to adapt one of America’s historic building campuses to climate change. The House of the Seven Gables (also known as the Turner-Ingersoll Mansion) was made famous by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s gothic novel of the same name...Read more

  • Rockville, a green small city built on transit urbanism

    Rockville’s early New Urbanism and TOD puts it at the top of a green small cities list.
    I am skeptical about lists of cities, because the devil is in the details—the metrics determine the rankings. But when I saw that Rockville, Maryland, was ranked as the second greenest small city in the US (under 100,000 population), I looked closely and found substance under the data. The Greenest...Read more