Design

Restoring the human-scale to the modern built environment is a long-term task, key to human health and welfare, that has barely begun.
What if the Academic criticisms of New Urbanism are right? What if the idea of fabric and monument buildings is inadequate to build a city?
Park Van Ness DC exterior day
Park Van Ness has remarkable details—and opens up a view from a major thoroughfare to a major urban park.
Leon Krier diagram
More and more people are appreciating that architecture and urban design of streets and public spaces have the power to connect, engage, and inspire all of us.
Ubuntu in Umbumbulu eThekwini Town Plaza
The principles of neighborhood structure and buildings that relate positively to public space resonate with traditional Zulu culture and village geography.
Boston Public Library before and after
The redo of the Boston Public Library 1970s wing shows how a building can be reform and adapted to today's needs.
Stunning historic rehabilitation provides affordable housing in New Orleans.
Restoring an original square in Savannah revives a neighborhood.
Many winners this year show how history and old buildings lead to richer neighborhoods and communities.
The ground-up movement which helped defeat urban decay in the 1980s is just as relevant now our cities face the opposite problem.
A set of principles that are clear and generative provide a solid foundation for the New Urbanism. Those principles have withstood the test of time and empirical research, and they can be implemented in countless ways.
The New Urbanism brought the environmental transect methodology into planning and development of human-scale, complete communities. Now the human habitat can be analyzed as a continuum with the natural world.