• 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

  • Ten reasons to build community through urban design

    There are two models for development of cities and towns. One, the neighborhood model, founded on thousands of years of trial and error, brings people together.
    We build cities that bring us together or push us apart. "Gated communities" are an obvious example of building to isolate, but other methods are also common. Streets that are too wide, with fast moving traffic, divide us. So do zoning codes that separate uses and housing types. Berms, buffers,...Read more