• New Pioneers: Lean Urbanism in America

    An entertaining book outlines how ordinary citizens can rebuild cities without the help or hindrance of big developers, big finance, and government bureaucrats.
    The New Pioneers: How Entrepreneurs are Defying the System to Rebuild the Cities and Towns of America, is one of the more entertaining and readable books on urbanism that I have come across in a long time. The subject is Lean Urbanism—“Making Small Possible”—a concept that has gained a fair amount...Read more

  • Parking diets for healthier cities

    Donald Shoup's new volume shows how better approaches to parking enable affordable housing, the missing middle, economic development, and better living.
    Note: I hope to see you all at CNU 26.Savannah next week. The lowly parking lot is filled with spaces about 9 by 18 feet with stripes on both sides and access lanes—typically all surfaced in asphalt—and it may be the most common, pervasive, and boring element of the US built environment. Although...Read more

  • Responding to the ‘Klinkenberg Retreat’

    The suburbs can be repaired in certain places, but it's a fool's errand to think they can be retrofitted wholesale, as a default pattern.
    I’m not going to spend a long time dissecting Kevin Adams' piece on "The Next Great Urban Reset," since a lot of it is ground that I have trod before in depth. I will say that it’s been a while since someone has named something after me, so I thank him for that. The last time that I believe it...Read more

  • Welcoming open spaces: Campus design, part 1

    Author's note: I will present innovative techniques for designing a campus, in a series of ten essays. The most human campuses (corporate, or university) combine adaptive geometric typologies acting in partnership. This is the secret to creating great urban spaces that invite use, above and beyond...Read more