• Drawing is worth a thousand words

    Nuanced pencil drawings help to graphically explain how a design works holistically. Drawing by hand can be more informative on the design intent and typically elevates the design quality. Hand drawing can even be therapeutic for the designer and the observer. Here is a master plan detail and...Read more

  • Small industrial city diversifies its economy with urbanism

    Elkhart, Indiana, is implementing plans to attract young, talented, workers to start businesses and boost the economy.
    Elkhart, a city of 52,000 in north Indiana, is not a place that is well known nationally for its urban revival. Yet Elkhart adopted a plan for a $400 million, 90-acre “River District” across from downtown. The district offers a setting for substantial new urbanist development, including a thousand...Read more

  • Converting a shopping mall to a downtown

    Downtown Westminster, Colorado, is designed as a ‘place’ that grows organically with affordable housing included.
    A new downtown is being built for Westminster, Colorado, a suburban city with no previous walkable downtown—on 105-acre former shopping mall site. Downtown Westminster will include 2,300 residential units with substantial affordable housing, and 1.7 million square feet of commercial uses—such as a...Read more

  • The walkable urban trend keeps going

    A national study shows strong demand for walkable urban development—cities with high rents perform surprisingly well on social equity measures.
    Walkable Urban Places (WalkUPs) continue to outperform other forms of real estate development in the nation’s largest metro areas, according to a new report Foot Traffic Ahead: Ranking Walkable Urbanism in America's Largest Metros • 2019 . The report finds a huge unmet demand for new WalkUPs, the...Read more