• Micro-townhouses designed for flexibility

    Twelve-foot-wide townhouses in Utah? They combine transit-oriented density with homeownership, and buyers can cut costs in multiple ways.
    Daybreak in South Jordan, Utah, a top-selling community nationally, shows how transit-oriented design can be achieved with production builders—and it is a laboratory of housing ideas . The latest is the “micro-townhouse.” The 12-foot-wide units range from 1,125-1,450 square feet on lots less than 1...Read more

  • Tactical Urbanism comes of age

    One clear lesson from the pandemic: Experimentation with streets may yield tremendous benefits with less downside than previously thought.
    Tactical Urbanism has been building momentum over the last decade since the concept was defined by Mike Lydon and Tony Garcia of Street Plans Collaborative. Many new urban firms have adopted Tactical Urbanism tools in recent years, leading to the creation of temporary public spaces, quickly built...Read more

  • Rick Cole’s new role: Updating urbanism for the 21st Century

    Note: This interview was recently published in The Planning Report : Insider’s Guide to Planning and Infrastructure. Questions posed by TPR are in bold. After more than three decades of leadership in government and public policy in Southern California, you’re stepping into a national role heading...Read more

  • The 15-minute city is the new 5-minute walk

    Proximity and human-scale are still vitally important for sustainability, and yet the geography of our lives has gotten bigger. That is why we need the 15-minute city.
    Why is the 15-minute city important? The 15-minute city is to the 21st Century what the 5-minute walk was to the 19th and early 20th centuries. I realized this after reading a history of my neighborhood, Fall Creek in Ithaca, New York . Because the neighborhood hasn’t physically changed that much...Read more