• Budgeting for a fractal city: Campus design, part 5

    Most funding should go to small projects in a living city. Instead, funding is often skewed toward large projects.
    Author’s note: This is the fifth in a series of ten essays that present innovative techniques for designing and repairing a corporate or university campus. These tools combine New Urbanist principles with Alexandrian design methods. The present-day project funding formula — skewed towards the...Read more

  • Sophisticated insertion of missing middle

    A transit-accessible infill development includes a variety of housing types geared to improving the economics of urban living.
    Sited behind a historic 1880 “grand home” in the Edgewood neighborhood of Atlanta, LaFrance Walk includes a variety of missing middle housing types within walking distance of the MARTA station and a major retail center. “One of the best aspects of living in LaFrance Walk is its proximity to the...Read more

  • Seamless town extension with affordable housing

    Tregunnel Hill in Cornwall, England, proves that the principles used in Prince Charles's Poundbury are replicable.
    In the Village of Newquay a new urban neighborhood has been built with local materials and workers, trained in an apprenticeship program. Nearly 90 percent of the new residents have moved in from the immediate area, a remarkable feat in a popular resort setting. Twenty-eight percent of the units...Read more

  • ‘Walkabout’ design with human sensors: Campus design, part 4

    A revolutionary method of direct human responses to imagined forms, performed on the actual site, reveals a vast amount of useful design information not otherwise available.
    Author’s note: This is the fourth in a series of ten essays that present innovative techniques for designing and repairing a corporate or university campus. These tools combine New Urbanist principles with Alexandrian design methods. Alexander’s implementation of participative design — essential...Read more