• The infinite suburb? They must be joking

    In their visions of the future, the elite graduate schools of urban planning lately see a new-and-improved suburbia, based on self-driving electric cars, “drone deliveries at your doorstep,” and “teardrop-shaped one-way roads” (I think that means cul-de-sacs) as the coming sure thing. It sounds...Read more

  • 25 great ideas of the New Urbanism

    The New Urbanism is a design movement toward complete, compact, connected communities—but it is also a generator of ideas that transform the landscape. Communities are shaped by the movement and flow of ideas, and the New Urbanism has been a particularly rich source of the currents that have...Read more

  • What do ‘Market Urbanism’ and New Urbanism have in common?

    Although market urbanists like walkable urbanism, they often focus on issues that are not at the core of New Urbanism.
    My recent book on sprawl was subtitled: “ The Case for Market Urbanism .” What is Market Urbanism, and how is it similar to (and different from) New Urbanism? Of course, market urbanism is not a movement on the scale of New Urbanism. There is a market urbanist blog (marketurbanism.com), and a few...Read more

  • The beauty of 25-foot urbanism

    These photos of Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati were taken and assembled by architect Tom Low . These 4- and 5-story masonry buildings were built circa 1900 on 25-wide lots—a standard American system of platting. They all have interesting detail on the ground floor and walk-up stairs inside as well as...Read more