• Planning a city that gets people moving

    Lake Wales, Florida, has adopted a plan that puts active mobility at the heart of day-to-day life.
    “Physical activity is a natural part of the daily living for humans,” notes John Simmerman, founder of Active Towns. “But so is being sedentary. One of the big challenges in our current realm is that much of our environment is designed around using the automobile and taking the easy way. Part of...Read more

  • Engineers resist narrow lanes, but change is coming

    An American Society of Civil Engineers survey shows the challenges to creating more walkable streets, yet the way forward is to enable more context-based design.
    A little over a month ago, Johns Hopkins University released the largest-ever research on travel lane width and safety, providing conclusive evidence that 9- and 10-foot lanes do not contribute to greater automobile crashes and, in some cases, reduce collisions. Traffic engineers have long shunned...Read more

  • Abstracts sought for IMCL

    International Making Cities Livable is calling for abstracts for two 2024 conferences—one in Newport, Rhode Island, and the other in Cortona, Italy.
    Following the 2023 conference in Poundbury, Dorchester and London, UK, the International Making Cities Livable (IMCL) announced two 2024 conferences in Newport, Rhode Island, (April 28-30) and Cortona, Italy (October 1-5). IMCL is calling for 300-word abstracts for papers for both conferences. “As...Read more

  • Missing middle combines cottages, mixed-use

    A missing middle development includes a cottage court, mixed-use building, street-fronting cottages, and an accessory dwelling on a narrow parcel near downtown Thunderbolt, Georgia.
    Village on the Bluff is located along the western shore of the Wilmington River 5 miles Southeast of Downtown Savannah, Georgia. The site is a narrow infill parcel running between two streets with split zoning—single-family residential on one and commercial on the other, in the small waterfront...Read more