• The potential of places like New Bedford

    A quarter of the nation lives in smaller cities, which are often overlooked but more affordable, have great assets, and have room to grow.
    Like most coastal cities, New Bedford, Massachusetts, boasts an impressive display of boats in the downtown harbor, and waterfront restaurants thrive with a view of these vessels, docks, and the water beyond. The difference is that New Bedford’s are clearly working boats, not recreational craft...Read more

  • Adding value to a commercial shopping center

    Wheatland Plaza in Duncanville is a model for adding value to an underutilized site along a suburban arterial through an efficient mixed-use design.
    As retail suffers and goes through technological change, this presents problems and opportunities for local communities—some of which can be solved through design transformations. Thousands of strip malls are struggling or vacant, especially in the suburbs. This image from Wheatland Plaza in...Read more

  • Kentucky wins in a walk

    Basketball fans across America have filled out their brackets using all kinds of analysis, but probably nobody else is using Walk Score to determine NCAA predictions. Here’s how the teams would fare.
    UPDATE: The Walk Score picks have not done so well after the first full weekend. Only six Sweet Sixteen Walk Score picks survived: Florida, Duke, Houston, Purdue, Kentucky, and Tennessee. St. John's, which we projected as a finalist, lost in a first-round upset. We only have a chance for two in the...Read more

  • For housing, the medium is the street

    We need street network reform, not just housing, to create abundant, thriving, healthy communities.
    There’s a new book generating discussion on housing and zoning—two topics that urbanists have been immersed in for decades. Abundance , by prominent progressive thinkers Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein, emphasizes zoning reform to put America back on track and provide direction for the Democratic...Read more