• How to create real housing affordability, with dignity

    New Town at St. Charles, MO lays out patterns useful in providing enduring affordability in communities.
    The U.S. housing shortage is most severe on the more affordable side of the market. At a time when costs are escalating broadly and homes that were recently attainable by many have moved out of reach of most, this is no surprise. The problem is most acute in the heated markets, of course, where...Read more

  • 8th annual Better Cities Film Festival screens in Detroit

    Unique annual film festival spotlights the world’s most inspiring stories about making cities, towns and neighborhoods better places for everyone.
    First+Main Films will be screening the 2022 Better Cities Film Festival on October 20 - 23 in Detroit, Michigan. The festival curates and exhibits the best films from around the world, all focused on the theme of making cities and towns better places to live, work and play. The 8 th edition of the...Read more

  • Shoup wins Seaside Prize

    Note: Public Square editor Robert Steuteville is on leave, and will return at the end of October. The 2023 winner of the Seaside Prize will be UCLA Urban Planning Professor Donald Shoup, who has led an international movement against off-street parking requirements and transformed the thinking on...Read more
  • A suburban neighborhood of tract housing within the city of Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States; culs-de-sac are hallmarks of suburban planning.

    Suburbia was a housing program

    We used to understand that housing construction was in the public interest
    Note: This article first appeared on The Deleted Scenes .​ Public Square editor Robert Steuteville is on leave through the last week of October. I’ve had this note sitting in my possible newsletter posts document: “Suburbia was a housing program.” I’ve alternated between thinking that was banal and...Read more