• The comfort of Light Imprint infrastructure

    I love these boardwalks in Carlton Landing, a new town in Oklahoma. The houses face a tiny pedestrian thoroughfare that consists of the boardwalk and rain gardens. The rainwater simply soaks into the ground. This is the ultimate in Light Imprint infrastructure, which reduces the dependence of...Read more

  • What covid proved about traffic safety

    In mid-April of 2020, we published an article indicating that as traffic was plummeting, traffic deaths were rising. This counterintuitive claim was not backed by firm numbers at the time, and the world was more focused on deaths from the pandemic anyway. But as Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns...Read more

  • Why Universal Design is critical to CNU

    Too many architects, planners, transportation engineers, and urban designers reduce the ADA to some kind of onerous hurdle that must be leaped.
    As a reporter, marketer, and planner, I have been involved with the Congress for New Urbanism since its founding. I started writing about urban design, growth, development and how cities work and fail in 1988, the same year I married a brilliant attorney and writer who has used a wheelchair for...Read more

  • Green, redevelopment fills hole created by ‘urban renewal’

    A New England-style green creates the site for mixed-use and affordable housing at the center of a historic city.
    Meriden, Connecticut, tore down its industrial heart in the middle of the 20 th Century to build an enclosed shopping mall that soon failed, replaced by a strip mall that flooded, replaced by offices that were flooded and demolished. The series of fiascos at the center of this city of 60,000,...Read more