• Are street trees the key to better cycle tracks?

    Research shows that bicyclists prefer street trees, especially between the bicycle lanes and traffic.
    City streets and sidewalks in the United States have been engineered for decades to keep vehicle occupants and pedestrians safe. If streets include trees at all, they might be planted in small sidewalk pits, where, if constrained and with little water, they live only three to 10 years on average ...Read more

  • My career sowing seeds of better design

    Here are roles and strategies that I have experienced to help many others to heal a damaged built environment.
    If you want to have the most sustainable healing impact on our damaged built environment, the architectural ideal of the lone genius isn’t the best way to go about it. If you have a choice between becoming that lone creative genius yourself and helping many others do better work, then by all means...Read more

  • 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