• Centerless village seeks developer of heart

    Aldea de Santa Fe, a new urban village in New Mexico, is fully built except for its mixed-use plaza. The time is ripe to complete this community.
    A new urban community has been built in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but it is still searching for its village center. Aldea de Santa Fe was created beginning in 2002. The 345-acre master-planned community took years in the planning and local government approval process, led by 14 property owners in the...Read more

  • To save carbon, cut out the parking lot

    Minimum parking requirements are a secret but significant source of carbon emissions from transportation.
    Imagine a city where nearly half of the land is covered in concrete, used for nothing more than parking cars. This is the reality in Arlington, Texas, where parking lots and garages occupy 42 percent of the city's land area. Dallas is not far behind, with a quarter of its downtown core dedicated to...Read more

  • When planners walk on the wild side

    The playful genesis of a new walkable urbanism geometry that seeks and explores walking trails in town and at the urban-natural boundary.
    “You never really feel like you’re building trails out here … Only finding them.” — Lawin Mohammad “Like with a mandala or a labyrinth … I circle and pass similar points along the way, discovering slightly altered variations on a familiar theme … perspectives deepened, elaborated and embroidered,...Read more

  • Ten years of walkable cities

    Jeff Speck updates his book, Walkable City, covering significant trends now and over the last decade.
    For an overview of the big trends in walkability now and over the last decade, Jeff Speck’s Tenth Anniversary Edition of Walkable City is hard to beat. Some trend lines are not good, such as an ongoing spike in pedestrian deaths and a population decline in big cities, while other news is more...Read more