• An international lens on sprawl

    As cities around the world are enveloped in sprawl, its health and sustainability problems are going global.
    Note: This is Part 2 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. Here's the link to Part 1 . According to MIT’s Center for Advanced Urbanism, “...Read more

  • CNU should engage with European urbanists

    For all its beautiful urbanism and high-quality transit, which America should emulate, Europe is behind the US in the understanding of charrettes, developers-as-town-founders, form-based coding, the Transect, and other new urban ideas.
    Members of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) look to traditional European towns and cities for inspiration, enticed by their exemplary public spaces, and walkable mixed-use neighborhoods. The iconic drawing by Léon Krier, Res Publica / Res Economica , is legendary for its direct explanation...Read more

  • The beauty of small towns

    Galena, Illinois, is often pictured when urbanists want to show the ideal American main street. It was also listed as number 35 in a recent Architectural Digest report on 50 Most Beautiful Small Towns in America . While this list is subjective, it does highlight the treasure of America’s small...Read more

  • Why new urbanists generated great ideas

    A multidisciplinary group with potential influence on and understanding of the built environment, new urbanists were uniquely positioned to push back effectively against the status quo.
    The late urban planner Hank Dittmar writes that he “perceived a dissonance between what [he] saw and liked in cities and landscape and what was being taught in school.” Everything that Dittmar loved about cities—mixed-use, walkability, fine-grain diversity of buildings, the network of small blocks...Read more