• Visionary code protects rural lands

    Preserving open space in a time of rising development pressure, while fostering equitable development, requires out-of-the-box thinking.
    The Rural Area Plan (RAP) for Davidson, North Carolina, uses a form-based code for aggressive rural land conservation. Sixty-five percent of the countryside is preserved over six square miles, allowing for the development of compact hamlets and villages on one-third of the area. The plan was...Read more

  • Empowering lessons for livable places

    Thanks to the Australian-American Fulbright Commission and UN-Habitat's World Urban Campaign, fundamental relationships at the heart of urban public health and livability are under scrutiny in tropical Australia.
    In The City in History , Lewis Mumford once properly characterized the essence of cities as a dynamic that unfolds between two poles of human life: "movement and settlement." Between these poles, we see the intersection of the built and natural environments, and the ongoing interaction and...Read more

  • Landscape infrastructure shapes future investment

    In Charlottesville, Virginia, 12-acre linear park incorporates stormwater systems into community spaces that allow for new development.
    The Strategic Area Investment Plan of Charlottesville, Virginia, guides the redevelopment of a former industrial stream valley into a mixed-income, mixed-use urban area that remains connected to its riparian roots. A 12-acre linear ecological park incorporates new stormwater systems while creating...Read more

  • Pedestrian village in a natural landscape

    The project inverts the usual relationship between car and human in land development.
    Swann Wynd incorporates a range of housing types and uses along an emphatically pedestrian-oriented right-of-way that links a main street and an artists’ village that are a quarter-mile apart by automobile. The pedestrian way includes sections of path, a footbridge, and a street—but mostly it is...Read more