• Top 10 stories of 2020

    Here's the top 10 stories on Public Square in 2020. While we posted many stories covering COVID, urban unrest, and other tragic events of the year, the most widely read articles centered on urban design, housing, retail, walkability, zoning, and architecture. Even in a year when so many other...Read more

  • Incremental steps toward pedestrian-friendly suburbs

    Note: This list of steps comes from Enabling Better Places: Commercial Corridors and Shopping Malls, a report by CNU and the Michigan Municipal League. Reforming places in your community that have a suburban, auto-oriented, single-use development pattern can feel like an overwhelming task. As the...Read more

  • How DOTs can help Main Street

    The nation’s more than 7,600 Main Streets are hurting. Nobody knows exactly how much. At some point in 2021, when the vaccine has become available to everybody and the numbers of Covid cases plummet, we will collectively look around American downtowns and see how many businesses are closed for good...Read more

  • The most beautiful parking lot in the world

    Parking is a necessity in cities, whether it involves residents storing cars for days, shoppers and restaurant patrons occupying spaces for hours, or Uber drivers stopping at the curb for minutes. The same holds true whether the car, or other vehicle, has a conventional or electric motor. But the...Read more