• Eleven ways to retrofit suburbs

    Transforming suburban places is a growing and necessary trend across America. What are the tactics to make it happen?
    The transformation of specific underutilized places in conventional suburbs is gaining momentum for several reasons. Suburban municipalities with little or no walkability are losing younger generations who are enamored with walkable urban places. From a regional standpoint, a balance of supply and...Read more

  • 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