• Traboules: Magic block-penetrating passages

    The City of Lyon, France, has several discreet covered passageways known as Traboules . They can also be found in a few other French cities such as Villefranche-sur-Saône, Mâcon, Saint-Étienne, along with several in Chambéry. The Lyon passageways are found in the historic 1st Arrondissement, and...Read more

  • New Urbanism on the Moon

    The architecture of community will be important in space, because you not only have to keep people alive, but happy and healthy—and you do that through sense of community.
    Hilton Hotels famously planned a hotel on the Moon back in the 1960s, when outer space fever was at a high pitch. These plans were obviously never realized and nobody has gone back to the Moon since 1972, but now space ambitions have surged again, and there has even been talk of space settlements...Read more

  • Making a new urbanist of me

    Great places have the ability to inspire, and Seaside changed my life from building wide, fast roads to analyzing and documenting the DNA of places.
    The first time I visited Seaside, I knew very little about traditional neighborhood development. The trip was a vacation with 10 family members, including my parents. We made ourselves quite comfortable in an amazing home designed and owned by Robert Orr, called the Old Natchez Compound, which...Read more

  • ‘Green streets,’ gentle density in a new studio town

    Trilith in Fayetteville, Georgia, is built around the idea that well-designed public space contributes to individual happiness and community well-being. Lew Oliver Inc. won a 2021 CNU Charter Award in the Neighborhood, District, and Corridor category.
    Trilith is inspired by the words of Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Colombia: “Great public space is a kind of magical good. It never ceases to yield happiness. It is almost happiness itself.” With that idea in mind, each part of Trilith is intended to connect to the whole community and...Read more