• Cleaning up a mess in Long Island City

    How landscape and urbanism came together to transform Queens Plaza—a hostile place for people on foot or bicycle.
    Note: This article is part of a collaboration between Island Press and Public Square on a series of articles based on recently published books on subjects related to urbanism. A lot of us are driven by the urge to fix damaged things, make broken things work, if not actually heal the landscape. In...Read more

  • New eco-city combines ancient practice and modern technology

    Masdar City in Abu Dhabi is designed with energy, transit, human comfort, and sustainability in mind.
    A new city rising on the edge of the Arabian desert may become one of the most sustainable cities in the world. Perhaps ironically, this attempt at creating a low-carbon city is occurring in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, which has grown wealthy exporting hydrocarbons to the world. Yet it’s not pouring...Read more

  • How green is this Apple?

    I've been a dedicated user of Apple products for 20 years—but Tim Cook's assertion that Apple's new headquarters will be the "greenest building on the planet" is absurd. To get a sense of scale of Apple's new Cupertino campus, Josh Arcurio superimposed it on Midtown Manhattan. It takes up 30-plus...Read more

  • A human-centered architecture for our time

    In The Humanists Versus the Reactionary Avant Garde, Charles Siegel illuminates the question of what progressive, contemporary architecture truly means.
    The Humanists Versus the Reactionary Avant Garde was sitting on a shelf in my office, awaiting review, for several weeks. I was busy, and in a chance conversation I told CNU co-founder Andres Duany that I didn’t know when I would find time to read it. “You have time for this book,” Duany assured me...Read more