• Leon Krier’s checklist

    The late architect and urban theorist wrote a to-do list for city founders, mayors, administrators, designers, settlers, and landowners.
    Leon Krier, who died last week , had definite ideas about city design and its details, large and small. Reprinted below is Krier’s checklist for community design and implementation, written for the Prince’s Foundation (now the King’s Foundation) in 2020. The publication Walkability and Mixed-Use:...Read more

  • Community has it made in the shade

    Oppressive summer heat is more bearable when a walkable community is designed for shade.
    As a heat dome hovers over the eastern and southern US, the topic of heat and urbanism is especially important. Most people associate urbanism with heat islands—which make urban places hotter—but that’s not always the case. Design choices can cool down urban places and make them more comfortable...Read more

  • Leon Krier, influential urbanist and architect, dies in Spain

    Leon Krier, a giant in architecture and urbanism and one of the intellectual founders of the New Urbanism movement, died at 79 on Tuesday, June 17, in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. “The work of the New Urbanist movement is grounded in the understandings of architecture, urbanism, modernity, and...Read more

  • What is a SLUG? A term for rural sprawl

    This image was recently posted on LinkedIn along with a discussion of the term SLUG, which stands for spread-out, low-density, unguided growth. Urban designer Kevin Abbott found the term in the 2013 edition of Virginia McAlester’s A Field Guide to American Houses . Some say this is another term for...Read more