• Transforming trailers

    Andres Duany of DPZ CoDESIGN thinks that houses on wheels could be a good answer to America's affordable housing problem, and to housing adapted for climate change.
    For more than a half-century, mobile homes have provided a major part of the unsubsidized affordable housing in the US. But mobile homes have not associated with traditional cities or urbanism—or good design in general. Duany would like to change that. He thinks that the humble house on wheels...Read more

  • Parking lot designed as an avenue

    Parking lots are among the ugliest and most common features of the American landscape. They cost a lot of money, use tremendous land, and make much of our cities less walkable. Yet as long as we drive, we do need parking. Parking doesn't have to be ugly. There are ways to provide far more value—...Read more

  • Urban multifamily buildings and the architecture of community

    Mid-rise residential buildings are an essential component of urbanism when they respond to context and help set the pattern of streets and blocks.
    Editor's Note: This essay appeared in Torti Gallas + Partners: Architects of Community . “Paris is so very beautiful that it satisfies something in you that is always hungry in America.” Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast “You can’t rely on bringing people downtown, you have to put them there.”...Read more

  • Revitalizing struggling corridors in a post-industrial city

    The City of South Bend focuses on complete streets to spur investment in neglected neighborhoods.
    The West Side Main Streets plan is using limited resources to revitalize two struggling four-mile-long corridors of the post-industrial City of South Bend. Until a few years ago, the two corridors—Lincolnway West and Western Avenue—felt like “truck-oriented highways,” plagued by poorly maintained...Read more