• From strip commercial to neighborhood hub

    A strip plaza, never a part of the walkable fabric, is redeveloped to be a well-connected neighborhood commercial and social center.
    Bryant Street is a ‘Main Street’ mixed-use, neighborhood center redevelopment of a 13-acre, surface parked shopping center in the Edgewood neighborhood of Washington, DC. The historical circumstances of the site suggest that the sloping property, even though located well within the city bounds, was...Read more

  • Solving the congestion problem

    This cartoon by Jean Wei for Transportation for America perfectly depicts what happened to so many American downtowns and main streets in the latter half of the 20 th Century. Older cities and towns faced many problems at the time, not the least of which was streets rebuilt by DOTs to accommodate...Read more

  • Urban design boosts ‘passive cooling,’ responds to climate change

    Civano, a new urbanist town in Tucson, Arizona, provides a useful model for how three-dimensional design cuts energy and water use—and also adapts to and mitigates climate change.
    The shade provided by buildings and trees in walkable neighborhoods could be a key to making urban places more adaptive and resilient to a warming planet, according to a study of Civano, an early new urbanist town in Tucson, Arizona. Green design characteristics of Civano—especially its white roofs...Read more

  • Five keys to a successful master plan

    Macon, Georgia, has been transformed by the Master Plan for Beall’s Hill, which helped tear down the walls between Mercer University and a disadvantaged neighborhood.
    More than 18 years ago I wrote about a plan by a largely volunteer new urbanist team to revitalize the Beall’s Hill neighborhood in Macon, Georgia, adjacent to Mercer University. It was a good plan, but was it going to happen or work? I believed, but I didn’t really know. The vision for the long-...Read more