• 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

  • Breaking the NIMBY impasse with design

    A recent The New York Times article The Bipartisan Cry of 'Not in My Backyard' reporting on opposition from across the political spectrum to higher-density housing, failed to mention a crucial point, says Nathan Norris, founding principal of the CityBuilding Partnership . "What is missing in the...Read more