• Powerful public space to knit Chicago’s South Side

    A new vision for Chicago's grandest boulevard connects two neighborhoods and provides a setting for 4,200 new housing units.
    The Midway Plaisance is Chicago’s grandest boulevard. One mile long and an eighth of a mile wide, “The Midway” connects Jackson Park on the east to Washington Park on the west, flanked on the north by the University of Chicago, and on the south by a historic neighborhood, Woodlawn. An original...Read more

  • Four decades of influential, incremental urbanism

    Seaside’s influence on urban redevelopment is profound—it initiated a re-evaluation of the the civic realm in planning and city building. Lessons learned at Seaside have been applied in the revival, redevelopment, and restoration of existing communities.
    Joe Riley, who served as mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, for 40 years, told me in 1998 that every mayor should study Seaside, Florida. “It shows that the sad conventional suburban sprawl, where every development is a separate enclave, is not inevitable,” he says. Seaside is one of the most...Read more

  • Celebrating community, creating place

    A Charter Award-winning development in Louisville has challenged conventional models of retail and civic space and provided a model for how the city can grow in the pattern of its historic neighborhoods.
    The historic city of Louisville, Kentucky, (where CNU 27 is taking place this week) consolidated with all of Jefferson County in 2003. In doing so, Louisville took in much of its conventional suburban hinterlands. A new development began construction that year, now inside the city, showing how...Read more

  • Saving the culture of one of China’s oldest settlements

    A master plan for Shanghai's oldest district prioritizes preservation while allowing for strategic development.
    China is rapidly losing its historic, human-scale urban fabric. Demolition of historic areas is common, and new development is typically done in block-size increments, sliced apart by wide arterial roads. Old Town is where Shanghai began as a fishing village in the 13th Century, and it retains some...Read more