• Music at Wyandanch Plaza

    Transforming a distressed Long Island community

    Two mixed-use buildings face a new square with fountains and activities like ice skating and concerts, forming the core of Long Island's first major transit-oriented development.
    The center of Wyandanch, New York, was until recently a sea of parking among fading commercial strip businesses in the middle of an economically distressed community on Long Island. Now, two mixed-use buildings face a new square with fountains and activities like ice skating and concerts, forming...Read more
  • Glenwood Park Atlanta brownstones

    The neighborhood that hope built

    Glenwood Park, Atlanta, on a former industrial site, was built to restore confidence that humanity can create wonderful, walkable, loveable places.
    The site of a former concrete recycling center two miles east of downtown Atlanta is now a vibrant, mixed-use, traditional neighborhood development (TND). Its design is not only architecturally-intriguing, but also environmentally sustainable. Its persuasive pitch and later economic success led to...Read more
  • Parklet on 75th Street in Chatham.

    Parklets transform Southside Chicago street

    How urbanism can bring hope and change to a working-class African American neighborhood.
    Temporary parklets and outdoor cafes have recently boosted sales and street life on three blocks of a working-class African American community on the Southside of Chicago. The tactical public spaces in front of businesses on 75th Street in Chatham, set up for a long weekend starting July 20, were...Read more

  • Preserving the rural landscape with agrarian urbanism

    In addition to land use that perversely incentivizes the destruction of rural lands with 5-acre lots, the financial system further incentivizes rural subdivisions gobbling up farmland at a frightening rate.
    As the harvest starts to come in here in Manitoba and conversations with my farming friends point to a good yield, I’ve been thinking about how to preserve these lands . Rural communities are often the ones with the greatest constraints, especially when it comes to finances. Without federal support...Read more