• New Urbanism from the air in Montgomery

    Traditional neighborhood developments at the Alabama state capital took sharply different turns after the Great Recession.
    It’s been more than a decade since I visited Montgomery, Alabama, a mid-sized state capital that also has a fair amount of New Urbanism. That includes infill development around downtown based on a new urban plan and code , and also substantial traditional neighborhood developments (TNDs)—The Waters...Read more

  • Erasing the Arbitrary Lines of zoning

    Nolan Gray joins CNU's On the Park Bench for a discussion of zoning, its history and problems, and what to do about it.
    Author Nolan Gray summarizes the most talked-about book on zoning, maybe ever— Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City, and How to Fix It — in a discussion on CNU's On the Park Bench. Gray describes a dramatic change in recent years on how the public views zoning, which went from a...Read more

  • Slouching towards Cincinnati

    Activists and designers have envisioned an alternative to a monstrous highway expansion that is advancing relentlessly through the political process in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.
    Note: This article first appeared in Strong Towns .​ A few months ago, I wrote a piece questioning the utility of the Brent Spence Corridor Project , a $3 billion highway widening project that includes the construction of a new companion bridge next to the Brent Spence Bridge, which crosses the...Read more

  • Suburban retrofit is ‘autophagy’ of the built environment

    Conventional suburbs are cities that have grown obese. We need processes for reusing their worn-out parts and creating something of higher value.
    My summer reading sometimes leads to connecting diverse topics with my area of professional focus—the built environment. I recently read a book on fasting 1 that introduced me to the body’s recycling process called “autophagy,” and I thought about suburban retrofit. I don’t know that anyone else...Read more