• Commercial strip becomes mixed-use promenade

    In the Capitol East District, the City of Madison has created a model for redeveloping a commercial strip highway.
    The potential of transforming commercial strip corridors is fully on display in the Capitol East District of Madison, Wisconsin. US Highway 151 (East Washington Street) is one of many thoroughfares that radiate out from the state capitol building in all directions—an area once blighted by shuttered...Read more

  • Shining a light on parking reform

    Motivated by concerns over housing affordability and climate change, big cities and small towns are eliminating parking requirements. The reform has just begun—especially in the suburbs.
    With reviews in The New Yorker, LA Times, New York Times Review of Books, and The Wall Street Journal , a book by Slate Magazine staff writer Henry Grabar has elevated parking as a national topic of conversation over the last month. New urbanists, who are used to dealing with parking but not...Read more

  • Visualizing 30 years of growth in Charlotte’s core

    As Charlotte continues to grow, let’s take a look back through the past 30 years via Google Earth to see just how far the Queen City has come. Images are via GoogleEarth and are 1993, 2002, 2012, and 2023 captures with a couple of older bonus images from Brooklyn Village. Uptown You know those...Read more

  • Four ways to transform ‘stroads’

    Every city has commercial strip corridors, but there are proven strategies for rebuilding them as places for people.
    The functional classification system used by departments of transportation tends to build commercial strip arterials that are hostile to pedestrians and bicyclists, notes Portland-based architect and urban designer Laurence Qamar. At CNU 31 in Charlotte in early June, Qamar outlined four techniques...Read more