• Right street, right place

    Don’t accept a one-size-fits-all street design for your city or town, or a highway design for your Main Street. Street designs that fit the context lead to better neighborhoods and communities.
    I’ve been noticing something more and more when I travel; while on a road trip, the design of the pavement will be the same regardless of what is around me. A highway surrounded by nature leads to a strip mall area, then to a residential neighborhood, then to a main street, and the only thing that...Read more

  • The value of a ‘master street plan’

    Why wouldn't you design every city plan and every suburb with a tightly connected pattern of streets and blocks?
    Note: This week I posted a commentary on the importance of starting with a street grid and how this disappeared from city planning. This piece by David Green explores the disconnect between the value of master street plans and the ongoing opposition to their creation, and how this came to be. It...Read more

  • Learning from the planners of old

    Street networks. Just Do It.
    A meme posted by a New Urbanist touches upon an important truth about how we build communities today, and why it is so difficult to create good places. New Urbanists are very good at designing great urban places—not as good, so far, at getting them built at the scale that is necessary to meet...Read more

  • How could Complete Streets policies be more effective?

    The Complete Streets movement has largely failed in practice, but a focus on networks and context could make it more effective.
    In a 2011 planning advisory board meeting for a county where I lived, I delivered the exciting news about New York State’s then-new Complete Streets Act, which “requires state, county and local agencies to consider the convenience and mobility of all users when developing transportation projects...Read more