• Why we need Observational Urbanism

    Putting observation first, and theory second, helped to move the planning profession toward more beneficial city building techniques in the late 20th Century. It continues to be an important test and correction to theories, even new urbanist ideas.
    Ten years ago, this summer, I wrote an opinion article commemorating the 50 th Anniversary of Jane Jacobs Death and Life of Great American Cities, in which I may have coined the term “Observational Urbanism.” I had not heard the term before, or since, with the exception of presentation earlier this...Read more

  • Turning a neglected site into four-sided mixed-use

    A development in Edina, a first-ring suburb of Minneapolis, hits a lot of metrics of sustainable planning. Nolan Mains was built on a 2.8-acre site that was previously nearly 100 percent impervious surface—mainly surface parking lots—in a commercial district. Completed in 2019, Nolan Mains has 100...Read more

  • Vision of a town: Celebration of the physical planner

    US Route 20, the longest road in the nation, travels through many interesting and historic places in New York State. One that you have probably never heard of is Cazenovia, a town of 7,000 people, founded in 1793. Cazenovia is a kind of place that you stumble on to, and, if you are an urbanist, you...Read more

  • A practical ‘landscape urbanism’ in a postwar suburb

    A centrally located former golf course becomes a new park of regional importance, through strategic development of a portion of the site.
    Meadowbrook Park doesn’t look a lot like typical New Urbanism, yet it provides usable parkland and diversity of living spaces to Prairie Village, Kansas. The surrounding neighborhoods of single-family houses, built in the 1940s and 1950s, are better for it because they previously lacked access to...Read more