• Downtown Pontiac: 'Nothing looks impossible'

    The Legacy Charrette plan includes both incremental steps to kick-start economic and cultural activity and long-term visions.
    Pontiac, Michigan, could be headed for a downtown revival, a CNU Legacy Charrette team led by DPZ Partners told citizens and officials. The keys to unlocking economic development are to transform the massive one-way Woodward Loop, also called the Wide Track, that currently sends traffic around...Read more

  • Spurring investment in an immigrant neighborhood

    Southwest Detroit is the kind of neighborhood that few people talk about outside of the Motor City. The community is not one of those that are vacant and dilapidated—the subject of "ruin porn" photos on the web. It's also not booming with development like Downtown and Midtown. Aside from small-...Read more

  • A main street makeover for a first-ring suburb

    A CNU charrette led by Moule & Polyzoides, Architects and Urbanists, focused on how to transform a two-mile stretch of the John R Road that traverses Hazel Park, Michigan. The goal is to promote development of a walkable downtown where none exists today. Doing so requires the taming of an...Read more

  • From Ideas to Action: Cheaply, quickly, fairly

    Last week, sociologist David Brain outlined strategies for a Lean charrette , which is a work-in-progress concept designed to match up with Lean Urbanism strategies. Opportunist that I am, I welcome that as an excuse to try Part 2 of the charrette discussion I offered here . Also, there’s this:...Read more