• A living, thriving testament to good urbanism

    The redevelopment of a 700-acre municipal airport in Austin is the reality of what quality development can be, if America embraces good planning and urban design.
    Sitting on the open patio of the Halcyon Café looking out on the geese gliding across Mueller Lake Park, I reflected on the impact of New Urbanism over the past three decades. Yes, conventional developers and Wall Street financiers are still belching out more placeless sprawl. Yet there are...Read more

  • Public housing transformation gets boost from freeway teardown

    In Syracuse, New York, the relocation of I-81 creates opportunity for replacing public housing with a mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhood.
    One of the oldest public housing projects in the US is being redeveloped in concert with the tearing down of an elevated freeway in Syracuse, New York. The transformation of the late 1930s Pioneer Homes is designed to restore a mixed-use, mixed-income neighborhood adjacent to the current Interstate...Read more

  • Shift to the suburbs not your grandfather’s sprawl

    Core cities are losing population to the suburbs, but the 2020s will not repeat the last half of the 20th Century. The suburbs are bound to urbanize.
    News reports over the past year have indicated that sprawl is returning with a vengeance in the 2020s. The latest article to make the claim is “ How the pandemic supercharged sprawl ,” in Bloomberg News . There is little doubt of movement out of core cities since early 2020. The extent is of the...Read more

  • Signature park project bridges community divide

    The deliberative engagement process used by the 11th Street Bridge Park in Washington, D.C. shows how community revitalization can benefit existing residents.
    Successful equitable development takes work but there are steps and actions organizations can take to ensure local communities are truly involved. The 11th Street Bridge Park in Washington, D.C. will break ground later this year, but it is the long-term community engagement work that illustrates...Read more