• Achievements in community design and architecture

    Some noteworthy projects show how skilled architects and urban designers are tackling mixed-use, civic, housing, and infrastructure challenges around the US.
    Designing the “architecture of community” poses endless problems, but elite new urbanists in the Urban Guild are up to the challenge. After serving on this year’s Urban Guild Awards jury, I have been reporting on many awarded projects over the last few weeks. Today, I highlight more extraordinary...Read more

  • TOD creates public space in suburban DC

    Construction along the future Purple Line creates a dense, mixed-use urban center—providing residents with options besides driving in the congested Maryland suburbs.
    Chevy Chase Lake is a mixed-use, transit-oriented development (TOD) completed this year on a suburb-to-suburb light rail line under construction just outside Washington, DC. Replacing a strip shopping center, its first two completed phases comprise three buildings totaling 530 units, 110,000 square...Read more

  • Old walls, new homes

    Adaptive reuse as a solution for housing
    Across the United States, cities are grappling with housing shortages and the challenge of revitalizing underutilized spaces. Vacant malls, abandoned factories, shuttered schools, and empty churches often sit idle, wasting valuable potential. But these structures don’t have to remain relics of the...Read more

  • Seven qualities of safe spaces

    An American urban planner who was influential in the design of mixed-income neighborhoods enumerates the qualities of public spaces that feel safe and secure.
    People are hard-wired by thousands of years of evolution to react to the built environment in certain universal ways. That’s true because the design of communities has a real impact on safety, health, and social relationships. Over countless generations, our ancestors were attracted to places that...Read more