• 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

  • Are superblocks the future of urban living?

    Meet the urban design theory rethinking life in the city.
    The recent referendum in Paris, which approved tripling parking fees for SUVs entering the city, is the latest in a string of actions across the European continent aimed at ushering in a new era of post-car urban living. But as automobiles increasingly leave the historic streets of cities like...Read more

  • Why your city needs a downtown ‘walkability plan’

    Here are 10 tactics to plan for better walkability with immediate implementation, improving safety and reviving a city center in the process.
    A rose by any other name would smell as sweet: Complete streets plan? Vision zero plan? Active mobility plan? Micro-mobility plan? Walkability study? I’ve called them “walkability studies” since 2009, when we did our first, in Oklahoma City . Now I call them “walkability plans,” because “study”...Read more