• ‘Aging with grace’: The next big challenge for urbanists

    Designing and establishing systems for walkable communities that support aging residents are important planning and development tasks for the coming decades.
    In late October, experts gathered in Seaside, Florida, to confront one of the greatest demographic issues of our times: the aging of the American population. With the Baby Boom soon to become the Elder Boom, Seaside founder Robert Davis concluded that New Urbanists should be figuring out how the...Read more

  • Reconfronting sprawl: Still paved with good intentions and asphalt

    After taking a back seat to urban revival for a decade or more, American suburbs are once again in the driver's seat of growth. Can they be built sustainably?
    Note: This is Part 1 of a two-part series that was written for Doug Kelbaugh's upcoming book THE URBAN FIX: Resilient Cities in the War against Climate Change, Heat Islands and Overpopulation, due out in April of 2019. No one better reveals the problems of sprawl than David Owen in his precocious,...Read more

  • Safetyism, fragility, and community design

    Our built environment separates everything to reduce conflict and make us safe—it may instead do the opposite.
    I am reading The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, which speaks, in part, of the culture of “safetyism” that has taken hold in American discourse and higher education. The authors draw from ancient wisdom, psychological theory, and science to make the case that it...Read more

  • A suburban town looks at retrofit options

    With transit on the way, Amherst, New York, reimagines its future.
    Amherst, a 122,000-population suburban town adjacent to the City of Buffalo, New York, is going through a transition. Buffalo's mass transit line is planned to be extended into Amherst, presenting an opportunity for mixed-use, transit-oriented nodes. This suburban retrofit opportunity would...Read more