• The infrastructure bill’s promise for cities

    To federal government this week adopted a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act ), which is going to pay for a lot of machines moving dirt over the next few years. To what extent will they make better cities? Streets, transit, and other infrastructure...Read more

  • Community design answer to homelessness

    An architect makes the case for little cottages, grouped in a village form, as a way to address homelessness.
    Every once in a while, a book comes across my desk that is elegant and simple, addressing a single issue with clarity. That’s A Solution to Homelessness in Your Town : Valley View Senior Housing, Napa County, California , by architect Charles Durrett, with Jinglin Yang, an architectural designer...Read more

  • Not hard to design a great public space

    Arcata Plaza, laid out along with the town’s first streets in 1850, was first used to load lumber from the sawmill—and has served as the commercial heart of the Northern California town ever since. Arcata Plaza is a square, literally, and the design is not complicated. A square should not be too...Read more

  • Fighting to save a troubled city

    A documentary on Youngstown, Ohio, won top prize at the Better Cities Film Festival in Detroit.
    A feature film on Youngstown, Ohio, a city that exemplifies industrial decline, won the Grand Prize Best Feature Film award in 2021 from the Better Cities Film Festival . The Place That Makes Us , honored in Detroit this week, tells the story of people who stayed in Youngstown and worked to rebuild...Read more