• A brief history of retail and mixed-use

    From the decimation of downtowns to the “retail apocalypse,” massively changing retail has been the norm for the last seven decades. Urban retail may benefit from the current transformation.
    This is one of a series of ongoing Public Square articles on the market, technological, and cultural transformation of the $5 trillion retail industry—and how it relates to a continued shift toward walkable, urban living. In the beginning, we built beautiful main streets and downtowns, and we all...Read more

  • Amphitheaters spark and sustain downtown vitality

    From Ancient Rome to modern America, amphitheaters are a superb facility to gather communities together.
    As an urban planner, I tend to mentally dissect and evaluate every community I visit or live in—either consciously or subconsciously. What makes this community work? How could it be improved? What draws me in? On a recent trip to Italy where there is so much beauty and history, I found myself lost...Read more

  • ‘Missing middle’ neighborhood opens

    Prairie Queen is a re-imagining of a suburban apartment complex in the form of a walkable neighborhood.
    Perhaps the nation’s first exclusively “missing middle” housing neighborhood, the 50-acre Prairie Queen in Papillion, Nebraska—near Omaha—completed its first phase in June. Prairie Queen is a re-imagining of a suburban apartment complex in the form of a walkable neighborhood. The concept, designed...Read more

  • Of donuts and chitchat: How people use public spaces

    William H. Whyte was a pioneer on studying the endlessly fascinating ways that people use public spaces. The SWA Group recently conducted an update on Whyte's work in New York City, and the results were published in a Guardian article called From lizarding to lingering: how we really behave in...Read more