• 65 reasons why urbanism works

    Studies that quantify how urban places affect human, economic, and environmental wellness are essential to building the political will for change.
    “Reconciliation is making peace with reality, our ideals, and the gap in between,” via Her Honour, Janice C. Filmon, Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba. Much of our work at PlaceMakers is about redirecting the trajectory of where we are headed with the targets needed to ensure the wellness of our...Read more

  • Seeking equitable redevelopment in southeast DC

    The rapid change in the District has fueled concerns that investment will leave existing residents high and dry, so the city is working with the community toward a better result.
    The closure of St. Elizabeths, a federal mental hospital in southeast Washington DC, left a gaping hole in the urban fabric in the 1980s. For three decades the hole remained. Public confidence frayed as residents of nearby Congress Heights watched promises of redevelopment fall flat for a number of...Read more

  • Vital little plans: Jane Jacobs in the age of global capitalism and rent seeking

    After all these years, Jacobs's thinking still contrasts starkly with the planning and economic orthodoxy of assembling large sites for master development and subsidizing the likes of Amazon.
    Jane Jacobs’ seminal book The Death and Life of Great American Cities shaped a generation of designers and activists to think of cities as places of exchange and variety rather than as machines for living. Her later work about economies of cities and of nations was equally challenging to orthodoxy...Read more

  • How Jacobs and Alexander unlock 21st Century problems

    Review of Cities Alive: Jane Jacobs, Christopher Alexander, and the Roots of the New Urban Renaissance, a book by Michael Mehaffy.
    I realized soon after I delved into Cities Alive that I was reading an important analysis for urbanism—now and in the coming decades. Those in the land-use planning and development business know the stories of urban renewal damage, the failure of modern urban projects like Pruitt-Igoe, and the...Read more