• Three dimensions of affordability

    Westlawn Gardens in Milwaukee is a case study in how to address the three main affordability components: Affordable to build, to rent or own, and to live in. All three strategies are critical.
    New Urbanism has a strong legacy in shaping public housing reform and revitalization over the last 30 years. It set the design standards for HOPE VI, a design approach that has continued to this day. HOPE VI lasted from 1993 to 2010, and evolved into HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI),...Read more

  • Building a new urban job center

    Providence in Huntsville looks like many other traditional neighborhood developments, but it also boasts three times the number of jobs as residences. How did it accomplish that and other seemingly impossible tasks?
    Twenty years ago today, DPZ CoDESIGN came to Huntsville, Alabama, to begin design on the Village of Providence, a Traditional Neighborhood Development that shattered several norms and accomplished things that aren't supposed to happen today. There are so many great Providence stories, but let's...Read more

  • Dabbawalla: Low-carbon urban delivery

    The traditional, low-tech system of delivering lunches in India's largest city is an inspirational model to sustainably reduce carbon emissions.
    Every visit to Bombay (Mumbai) renews my fascination with the service that delivers home-cooked lunches to office workers. The service is provided by Dabbawalla, which literally translates to “one who carries a box,” a tiffin, a modular stainless steel lunch container. For the past 134 years, they...Read more

  • A pattern language applied to a suburban strip

    A report on a workshop in Charlotte shows how Christopher Alexander’s pattern language can be expanded to improve communities.
    A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander is one of the best-selling architectural books of all time, inspiring many urbanists with ideas related to community design. Yet its land-use influence is limited by the difficulty of translating the ideas into comprehensive plans and zoning codes. Also,...Read more