• Guerilla Urbanism asks forgiveness, not permission

    From toilet plungers for bike lanes to community gardens on vacant lots to locally sourced incremental development, citizens are finding creative ways to make urban space while bypassing traditional bureaucratic systems.
    Guerilla Urbanism is a grassroots movement that allows ordinary citizens to reclaim and reshape urban spaces, explains Fernando Pages Ruiz, a homebuilder, developer, and author based in Houston, Texas. It harnesses Tactical Urbanism but differs in that it more directly challenges the power...Read more

  • Artistic, industrial neighborhood plans to stay quirky as it grows

    The Cincinnati neighborhood of Camp Washington has a remarkable capacity for economic development, but the challenge is to manage growth without losing the unique mix of buildings, uses, and people.
    Camp Washington was decimated by population loss over the last 50 years. Now, the Cincinnati neighborhood has remarkable economic development potential. The community’s industry and proximity to the University of Cincinnati and downtown make it an ideal future research and development hub. A recent...Read more

  • Kentlands gets a downtown makeover

    Design changes to the center of Kentlands, the influential traditional neighborhood development, show the potential for urbanism to improve as it ages.
    The test of urbanism is whether it can evolve and change over time, becoming more interesting with each iteration. Many early New Urbanism projects are beginning to molt and transform as buildings age. Kentlands in Gaithersburg, Maryland, was designed in 1988 by DPZ and expanded in 1996 when a town...Read more

  • Project aims to connect a city

    CNU’s Legacy Project in Norwood, Ohio, examines strategies for connecting neighbors, neighborhoods, and the city as a whole to the larger region.
    Norwood is a small city of neighborhoods. An enclave surrounded by Cincinnati, Norwood has a “porch culture.” Residents hang out on their porches and greet their neighbors. However, traveling from porch to porch may be challenging, as the historically working-class city has four wards. Each ward is...Read more