• Insights into my journey with a bit of advice

    Start off the year with more conversations, focus on what you enjoy, and support others along the way.
    Born and raised in Michigan, auto-centricity and sprawl were integral to the state’s identity, profoundly influencing my generation. Your 16th birthday was a right of passage. Friends’ identities were linked to their sprawling neighborhoods. As a child, I nicknamed my grandmothers with this...Read more

  • The 5-minute neighborhood, 15-minute city, and 20-minute suburb

    The reality of suburban distances to retail and community amenities has inspired a new term: the “20-minute suburb.” The concept is an evolution of the 15-minute city, focusing on transportation, zoning, and strategic densification.
    That measurement of time in which someone is more likely to walk or bike rather than drive a car to an errand has been the subject of much discussion among urbanists. Thirty years ago, the New Urbanism first proposed a neighborhood of a quarter-mile radius. The five-minute walk “pedestrian shed”...Read more

  • Fighting loneliness through community design

    As the problem of loneliness grows, urbanists and planners may successfully design for social interaction in three broad ways.
    America is suffering from an epidemic of loneliness, according to Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. One in two adults report experiencing loneliness, he explains, and the numbers are highest among young adults (79 percent of those aged 18-24 report feeling lonely). Loneliness has profound implications...Read more

  • Town converts parcel into downtown hub

    A sold-out concert by soul music legend Gladys Knight opened a new 2-acre park in Douglasville, Georgia, recently—that’s a good sign for the multipurpose public space in the county seat 30 miles west of Atlanta. Douglasville is another example of a town converting an underutilized parcel downtown...Read more