• Hundred-year plan for a gateway city

    Plan Viva Laredo is making an immediate impact on Laredo, as streets are retrofitted for multimodal transportation and developers are encouraged to use new urban principles.
    As the United States’ largest inland port, and third-largest overall port, Laredo, Texas, is an important city economically and a gateway to manufacturing across the Mexican border. Laredo has achieved double-digit growth in every decade since 1860. Yet Laredo is also one of the poorest cities in...Read more

  • Street trees, a planetary prescription

    “The most effective way to fight global warming is to plant lots of trees, a study says. A trillion of them, maybe,” according to a July 4 article by the Associated Press . Street trees may be the most effective of all, because of their multiple beneficial impacts. In addition to sequestering CO2—...Read more

  • To fight climate change, reaffirm beauty

    Building Places People Love is important for sustainable communities—urbanists should embrace the aesthetic eclecticism that is responsible for many of the cities we admire today.
    Ever since Vitruvius identified firmness, commodity, and delight as the three elements of good architecture, beauty has been associated with harmony. From the Greek word harmonia meaning ‘to join well,’ a beautiful building was understood to be the result of a pleasing composition. Before one’s...Read more

  • Cities benefit from restoring two-way traffic

    Two-way streets prove safer, more walkable, and more supportive of business than one-way streets for Midwestern cities.
    Midwestern cities report significant success restoring two-way traffic on one-way streets. New Albany, Indiana, switched more than four miles of city streets while implementing traffic-calming measures made possible by the conversions. Police Chief Wm. Todd Bailey reports, in a public letter, that...Read more