• Why we code

    Andres Duany offers more than 20 reasons why urban design coding is necessary—and he hopes that someday it will no longer be needed.
    Within the last half-century, some 30 million buildings have degraded cities and reduced landscapes. Must we tolerate this comprehensive disaster in exchange for the, perhaps, three thousand great buildings that great architects have produced? Such a win-loss ratio is as unacceptable in...Read more

  • Affordability, millennials, and the next Baby Boom

    Urban living with kids, part one: Attainable urban housing for millennial families with children is poised to become one of the largest market demands in the near future.
    My interest in this issue came from my husband’s and my own struggle in dealing with it. Like many young adults of our millennial generation, my husband and I spent the decade after graduating college living and working in some of the major metropolitan cities in the US and abroad – cities like...Read more

  • Nolli map as a tool for small developers

    The Nolli Map is the most underutilized tool in the designer/developer tool box. It provides an intimate understanding of place.
    Small scale incremental developers are concerned with enhancing the character and economic vitality of neighborhoods through flexible, human-scaled, mixed-use buildings. In other words, a small developer’s focus is in building places the way they have been built for centuries; piece by piece...Read more

  • Need quick public buy-in on climate action? Think urban heat islands

    As a strategy, it’s local, less controversial and far more manageable, with actionable steps that give quick, tangible feedback while simultaneously addressing climate change.
    Climate change is arguably the biggest challenge facing humanity. It is categorically and qualitatively different from the long list of chronic troubles that civilization has always faced, from poverty and disease to crime and war. Importantly, cities are no longer seen as the problem, as they were...Read more