• Restoring a lost square

    Often, in the 20th Century, the courthouse square structure was damaged by automobile-oriented planning. Recovering what was lost is not easy—it’s a process of strategic elimination and addition to repair the form that is hidden while the town grows.
    What can be done when a historic courthouse town has been robbed of its square? Clarkesville, Georgia, was founded two centuries ago as the seat of Habersham County, and grew as an early resort town in the Appalachian foothills about 70 miles northeast of Atlanta. The municipality of about 2,000...Read more

  • How zoning reform has helped to turn Buffalo around

    The New York Times recently reported on Buffalo’s “ other story ,” an unexpected and dramatic increase in population in the last decade, the first time this had happened in 70 years. The “other story” in the Times headline is a reference to the Buffalo shooting, which brought weeks of negative...Read more

  • Eleven principles for places recovering from disinvestment

    Of the four types of recovery facing America cities and towns—disaster, sprawl, disinvestment, and the recovery of community for those fleeing climate change—the recovery of places from serious disinvestment arguably gets the least amount of press today. But with reasonable effort, it’s the...Read more

  • Analysis furthers code reform in Indianapolis

    Indianapolis has reformed its zoning along current and future Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines to support transit-oriented development, aided by a “geoaccounting” analysis, according to a report in Strong Towns . The analysis graphically showed land underutilization along the transit lines. Urban3...Read more