• Eye-opening video shows church site reuse

    Creating intimate spaces within blocks could be the answer for some underutilized house of worship sites—as shown by a plan for catholic churches in a midwestern city.
    The US is facing a tremendous and growing number of church properties that are in need of better utilization or reuse . A plan and video for two catholic churches in South Bend, Indiana, shows how such properties might enable new urban placemaking of a high order while preserving the houses of...Read more

  • The new urbanist developer King

    Charles III, who ascended to the throne of the United Kingdom late last week, may be the only world leader who has personally built a successful mixed-use, walkable town.
    “It is impossible to find another housing estate built in the past quarter century that is as richly textured, as intricate, as convincing as a whole, and which is getting better not worse with age” wrote architect Ben Pentreath in The Financial Times , of Poundbury in Dorchester, England. The...Read more

  • Revitalization begins with cloverleaf demolition plan

    In the City of South Bend, getting rid of absurdly failed highway infrastructure may be the key to revitalizing a district. The federal government is betting $2.4 million on it.
    In terms of failed urban renewal infrastructure, it would be hard to find a more absurd example than the Eddy Street cloverleafs in the Farmers Market District of South Bend, Indiana. These ramps on both sides of the St. Joseph River were completed in 1963 to carry traffic to and from a Studebaker...Read more

  • The magic of inner-block development

    The opportunities are vast to create human-scale places on the inside of urban blocks, according to a discussion on CNU's On the Park Bench.
    The most photographed street in the US is Acorn Street, in Boston, a little mid-block residential thoroughfare in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. The reason why Acorn—along with similar streets like Elfreth’s Alley in Philadelphia—is so popular, is because of its human scale, according to architect...Read more