• Small cities and towns: On the verge of a renaissance?

    Market and demographic trends could lead to revival of smaller American communities, according to a report.
    Economic and demographic trends may help small cities and towns to make a comeback this decade, according to a recent article that quotes Ann Daigle, a new urbanist planner and urban designer. Although some prominent economists and thinkers such as Paul Krugman are pessimistic of the prospects of...Read more

  • The grid makes a comeback

    An analysis of US street networks since 1940 shows plunging connectivity in the last half of the 20th Century, followed by a sharp reversal of that trend in the new millennium.
    Since 2000, connected street networks have made a comeback, according to a University of Southern California analysis of US streets over the past century. “Since 2000, the grid index and its components have risen back to levels not seen since the mid-20th Century,” notes Geoff Boeing, assistant...Read more

  • Thanksgiving and the magic of community

    This holiday is about places and people and memory, and that has an impact on how we build and experience cities and towns.
    To me, Thanksgiving smells of cool gray skies, bare trees, decaying leaves, and an old town in Connecticut. That’s where we spent many Thanksgivings when I was a child—at the 19 th Century house of an aunt and uncle. We always went for a walk—several walks—the older and younger ones together with...Read more

  • How suburbs will change after COVID

    As people move out of city centers into suburbs, keys policy changes and trends could help to make suburbs more walkable and affordable, according to panelists at a National Press Foundation event.
    “We certainly have quite a bit of anecdotal evidence” on people moving out of city centers to the suburbs, reports Richard Fry of the Pew Research Center, a panelist on a recent National Press Foundation webinar, The Suburbs After COVID . Solid numbers from the US Census Bureau won’t emerge until...Read more