• For housing, the medium is the street

    We need street network reform, not just housing, to create abundant, thriving, healthy communities.
    There’s a new book generating discussion on housing and zoning—two topics that urbanists have been immersed in for decades. Abundance , by prominent progressive thinkers Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein, emphasizes zoning reform to put America back on track and provide direction for the Democratic...Read more

  • New towns are important part of New Urbanism

    New towns have always been part of New Urbanism, and the movement should embrace that aspect as a necessary complement to infill, retrofit, and highway transformation.
    After two decades of city-focused urbanism, new towns are generating new interest. To answer the demand for new and affordable housing in developed countries in general and the US in particular, the thinking is that we need more than infill. New Urbanism has long been associated in the popular...Read more

  • How in-city highways impact social lives and health

    Freeways reduce social connections between people in a city, and this has important health implications—which is another reason to replace highways with street grids when possible.
    What is the greatest threat to your health? Smoking cigarettes? Becoming an alcoholic? Physical inactivity? Becoming overweight? According to the CDC, it’s lacking social connections (see graph below). If you don’t have friends, family around you, or regular contact with other humans who can check...Read more

  • Downtown Daybreak opening a mixed-use urban center

    The 200-acre downtown for the largest new urban community culminates a plan that grew out of a regional planning effort to reimagine the Wasatch Front metropolis.
    Daybreak in South Jordan, Utah, is the largest new urban development with 30,000 residents and is opening what may be the biggest new urban downtown to date. As of 2025, Downtown Daybreak features a new Triple-A ballpark for the Salt Lake Bees, an amphitheater, a performing arts center, a large...Read more