• Seeking Paradise—a year later, town plans to rebuild

    An unprecedented public process created a long-term recovery plan for the California municipality leveled by fire—and sets a model for responding to a changing world.
    A year ago November 8, the Camp Fire swept through Paradise, California—and there may be no community that was destroyed as thoroughly in any modern US natural disaster. The working-class town of 26,800 people (2018 estimate) lost 85 percent of its buildings in a fire that claimed 86 lives...Read more

  • Amphitheaters spark and sustain downtown vitality

    From Ancient Rome to modern America, amphitheaters are a superb facility to gather communities together.
    As an urban planner, I tend to mentally dissect and evaluate every community I visit or live in—either consciously or subconsciously. What makes this community work? How could it be improved? What draws me in? On a recent trip to Italy where there is so much beauty and history, I found myself lost...Read more

  • Refuge and prospect: The front porch

    One of Seaside’s crucial mandates: Houses should have porches. New Urbanism spread from there, and the number of new U.S. homes built with porches has risen ever since, from 42 percent in 1994 to 52 percent in 2004 to 65 percent in 2016.
    My approaching birthday has me taking stock, as approaching birthdays do. This year isn’t a milestone — I’m merely being ushered into my ( write it! ) late 40s. But I’m passing another sort of milestone. I moved to the South when I was 23. This birthday means that I’ve been a Southerner over half...Read more

  • Healing a troubled medical district

    Memphis Medical District demonstrates the power of anchor institutions to improve sense of place and the economy in surrounding neighborhoods, while avoiding displacement.
    At 2.6 square miles, the Memphis Medical District is a city-within-a-city that has suffered severe disinvestment in the last 50 years. The population, once more than 30,000, declined to less than 10,000 by 2014, when medical and educational institutions in the district agreed to partner with local...Read more