• Read the lot before the facade

    The threat is not modern architecture. It is losing fine-grained urban structure while preserving enough historic vocabulary to make the loss look compatible.
    Walk south from Gerrard Street into Cabbagetown Southwest, Toronto, and the obvious heritage story presents itself immediately: brick houses, bay windows, front gables, porches, narrow setbacks. It is easy to decide that the thing worth saving is the picturesque surface. The facade is what...Read more

  • A music festival that thrives in walkable places

    If not for COVID, it would have been the 20th annual Porchfest in Ithaca. The event offers lessons for urbanism.
    This past weekend, Porchfest took place in Ithaca, New York, a grassroots community event that offers lessons for urbanism. Porchfest began in 2007 and has spread across the US, into Canada, and now Australia. It would have been the 20 th annual Porchfest this year if not for two years lost to...Read more

  • Charming urbanism inside the block

    A series of small, diverse developments in Edmond, Oklahoma, is building on the idea of inner-block urbanism.
    In the City of Edmond, Oklahoma, important work is being done to create urbanism within blocks—this is called “inner-block urbanism.” In a city with gaps in the urban fabric and somewhat inhospitable streets—very common in the US—this idea enables the development of small-scale projects comprising...Read more

  • Amenities or infrastructure? Who gets to decide?

    “Amenity” is not a neutral description. It is an accounting decision—and Pensacola shows what a wider ledger can build.
    The Charter of the New Urbanism begins with a premise that infrastructure accounting still struggles to absorb. It treats disinvestment, placeless sprawl, separation by race and income, environmental deterioration, loss of agricultural lands and wilderness, and erosion of built heritage as one "...Read more