• Urban Renewal, art that packs a punch

    I was in Virginia Beach, on vacation, visiting the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, when I came across the painting. It is called, simply, Urban Renewal, circa 1960. The New York City artist Lee Loeb was known for cityscape paintings. The museum has a wealth of great art, but the content of that...Read more

  • Nansledan wins award for affordable housing design

    King Charles’s follow-up to Poundbury gets the Gindroz Award for excellence in affordable housing. Nansledan is a large new urban community on the Northwest coast of Cornwall, England.
    Nansledan is the Duchy of Cornwall’s follow-up to the world-renowned Poundbury, a mixed-use, walkable community that’s an urban extension of Newquay, a historic port. It was planned and launched under leadership of Prince Charles (now King Charles), who owned the Duchy before being crowned King. (...Read more

  • To build a center on a former mall

    A mixed-use center is the best way to maximize value from a vacant mall site, but it requires proactive city leadership, as seen in Huntsville.
    MidCity District in Huntsville, Alabama, is a 140-acre mixed-use development on the site of the former Madison Square Mall, built in 1984. As the name implies, it is centrally located to the sprawling Rocket City and its largest employment centers, about three miles west of downtown. The District...Read more

  • For the love of mimosas, see Mashpee Commons

    Cape Cod boasts many things, including the first conversion of a sterile strip mall to a village center. It’s a model for what to do with thousands of dead and dying malls.
    My first professional work out of college was on Cape Cod in the 1980s. I read National Geographic, and I loved the photos of village architecture and the picturesque harbors featured in their coverage of the region. Having grown up and studied in Pennsylvania, I had a romantic notion of New...Read more