• TOD creates public space in suburban DC

    Construction along the future Purple Line creates a dense, mixed-use urban center—providing residents with options besides driving in the congested Maryland suburbs.
    Chevy Chase Lake is a mixed-use, transit-oriented development (TOD) completed this year on a suburb-to-suburb light rail line under construction just outside Washington, DC. Replacing a strip shopping center, its first two completed phases comprise three buildings totaling 530 units, 110,000 square...Read more

  • Old walls, new homes

    Adaptive reuse as a solution for housing
    Across the United States, cities are grappling with housing shortages and the challenge of revitalizing underutilized spaces. Vacant malls, abandoned factories, shuttered schools, and empty churches often sit idle, wasting valuable potential. But these structures don’t have to remain relics of the...Read more

  • Seven qualities of safe spaces

    An American urban planner who was influential in the design of mixed-income neighborhoods enumerates the qualities of public spaces that feel safe and secure.
    People are hard-wired by thousands of years of evolution to react to the built environment in certain universal ways. That’s true because the design of communities has a real impact on safety, health, and social relationships. Over countless generations, our ancestors were attracted to places that...Read more

  • Voters choose transit in two sprawling cities

    Successful ballot initiatives in Nashville, Tennessee, and Columbus, Ohio, have the potential to greatly improve mobility and transit in two of America’s fastest growing, automobile-dominated cities.
    In the excitement and consternation of the national election in November, it was easy to miss some good news at the ballot box in a pair of America’s fastest-growing big cities. Citizens in the Nashville and Columbus regions voted by healthy margins to tax themselves to invest in transportation...Read more