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New rail and bus rapid transit routes are being built in virtually every large metropolitan area in the US, Canada, and Mexico. Almost 800 route-miles of new transit infrastructure–most of it with dedicated lanes–is now under construction, at a...
About thirty years ago, someone told me that “The best transportation plan for a city is a good land use plan.” Over the years, the more I thought about it, the more sense this idea made to me. I realized that the potential for land use changes to...
When it comes to achieving a "Smart City," the qualities that make up the very lifeblood of urban living take priority over technocratic solutions.
Note: 2016 is the centennial of the birth of Jane Jacobs.
Jane Jacobs’s pivotal book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is the most influential American text about the inner workings of cities—of how they fail but also of how...
The often quoted cliche that millennials are moving downtown is not quite accurate. The greatest share of young adults is choosing urban neighborhoods outside of downtown. Just over a third of millennials identified in this 2014 nationwide survey...
Compact development is the best for protecting watersheds because it reduces per capita runoff, according to this graph from the Crabtree Group. Most stormwater narratives state that density is bad because the increased runoff is only considered on...
Little in this world is more powerful and satisfying to humans than a well-designed human habitat juxtaposed against nature.
The movement of millennials toward major city centers has been well reported—but many are locating in smaller, second- and third-tier cities, as noted by Gizmodo. The reason is economics. As the graph shows, some major cities have an affordability...
Form-based codes are for cities and they provide little benefit for rural and open areas?
Wrong. One of the advantages of form-coding is that it brings uses and activities together—as opposed to separating them—and the result is compact...
There once was a tree on Nantucket
With none of its roots in a bucket.
"That can’t be,"
Said the state DOT,
But no driver has ever yet struck it.
Note: Architect John Massengale recently took photos on Nantucket, Massachusetts, of trees growing...
An iconic new urban diagram from the 1990s shows a walkable neighborhood, top, compared to conventional suburban development, below. The uses are the same but the organization of the uses are different. This drawing by Thomas Low for DPZ was widely...