• Why are fire officials hung up on street widths?

    A focus on one dimension ignores more important geographical aspects to public safety in a walkable city.
    Last week the Baltimore City Council voted to repeal the "20-foot-clear" requirement for fire access on city streets—replacing that standard with more flexible rules recommended by the National Association of City Transportation Officials. The change, which the mayor is considering signing, would...Read more

  • The amazing route diversity of street grids

    A mathematical equation helps to explain the endless variety of cities and the cookie-cutter sameness of conventional suburbs.
    After Public Square published an article on the capacity of street grids to handle traffic, developer Vince Graham sent us a mathematical equation that helps explain their power. Graham calls it the Hawthorne Equation—named for Casey Hawthorne, a math whiz who came up with it—which shows the number...Read more

  • How density and proximity are transforming retail

    As more retail moves into cities, the suburban boxes fronted by parking lots are giving way to more walkable designs.
    Big changes are taking taking place in retail, and not all of them have to do with online sales—which account for no more than 10 percent of total sales . A big shift has to do with the success of smaller, urban format stores like CityTarget opening in walkable urban locations across the US. People...Read more

  • Space is experienced positively only when it is coherent: Campus design, part 8

    Open space will be used when we feel that it encloses us with a semi-permeable, welcoming perimeter. The design of successful urban space therefore relies predominantly on human psychological responses.
    Author’s note: This is the eighth in a series of ten essays that present innovative techniques for designing and repairing a corporate or university campus. These tools combine New Urbanist principles with Alexandrian design methods. Architectural academia perversely condemned coherent urban spaces...Read more