• Sustainable design pioneer Kelbaugh remembered

    Influential urbanist, architect, academic, and early proponent of transit-oriented development (TOD) Douglas Kelbaugh died February 18 at the age of 78. Kelbaugh was professor and dean emeritus of the architecture and urban and regional planning at Taubman College of the University of Michigan. He...Read more

  • Electric cars shouldn’t distract us from changes to the built environment

    News that mining of lithium comes up short to solve the climate crisis highlights a need for walkability and micromobility.
    Governments and car manufacturers are touting electric vehicles (EVs) as the wonder antidote to climate change. EVs will need abundant mined lithium, a key component of EV batteries. A recent report by the Climate and Community Project at the University of California, Davis, Achieving Zero...Read more

  • Spokane streamlines ‘missing middle’ housing

    A house plan catalog is designed to expedite construction of compact housing that fits the neighborhood context throughout the city.
    Spokane, Washington, is moving forward with highly streamlined approvals for a catalog of “missing middle” building plans in response to rising housing costs. The city of 228,000 people, where home prices increased substantially in recent years, officially declared a “housing emergency” last summer...Read more

  • Changing street design is critical to reducing bike-ped deaths

    Planner and author Jeff Speck argues that efforts to make our streets and roadways safer will fail unless the traffic engineering profession reforms its design practices.
    The US is experiencing “a grave upswing of roadway deaths,” and that trend is most pronounced among pedestrians and bicyclists, according to Jeff Speck. “Cycling deaths are up 44 percent over the past decade, and pedestrian deaths have risen a stunning 82 percent since 2009 — and that in the...Read more