• Aging with place and the ‘silver tsunami’

    The oldest baby boomers have crossed the 70-year old threshold, and this generation was the first to live their entire lives in a car-dependent society. Many are looking to move to an urban setting.
    While grocery shopping recently I witnessed a person roughly my age helping her mother shop. I couldn’t immediately identify her mother’s ailment or reason for needing help, and little did I know I’d be doing the same thing for my own mother this week following her eye surgery. The “silver tsunami...Read more

  • New York State DOT picks ‘Community Grid’ in Syracuse

    Since 2008, CNU has highlighted the advantages of transforming the elevated I-81 through the heart of the city.
    New York State DOT has selected the “Community Grid” as the preferred alternative for Interstate 81 in Syracuse, a plan that would allow the elevated viaduct that has severed city neighborhoods since the 1950s to revert to a grid of streets. I-81 leveled African-American and ethnic neighborhoods,...Read more

  • Re-designing Church for the 21st Century

    A creative approach moves from single-use big boxes to walkable mixed-use neighborhoods.
    Church participation has been declining in the United States over the past five decades. Hundreds of churches close every month. The closings have increased as an unprecedented percentage of young adults choose to spend their time elsewhere. But, will the trend continue? The answer is no if Dr...Read more

  • Crash diet for a freeway corridor

    Conversion to a boulevard would reduce the right-of-way of I-980 in Oakland by 75 percent, connecting neighborhoods and allowing mixed-use development where land now generates no tax revenues.
    I-980 remains a testament to the intense disapproval for freeway construction at the end of the highway-building era. Public opposition to its construction was so strong that the project was abandoned in 1971, only to be resurrected and finally completed over a decade later. Now, the excessively...Read more