• Families, cities, and schools

    Urban living with kids, part three: For cities vying for the best and brightest, a mixed-use urban neighborhood with a great public school is a slam dunk.
    One of the largest market demands on the horizon consists of young couples seeking affordable urban living with kids. However, a big challenge for many parents in seeking an urban lifestyle has do to with the quality of urban schools. This issue has caused many young couples once they have children...Read more

  • Ten reasons to build community through urban design

    There are two models for development of cities and towns. One, the neighborhood model, founded on thousands of years of trial and error, brings people together.
    We build cities that bring us together or push us apart. "Gated communities" are an obvious example of building to isolate, but other methods are also common. Streets that are too wide, with fast moving traffic, divide us. So do zoning codes that separate uses and housing types. Berms, buffers,...Read more

  • Jane Jacobs would be fighting to preserve affordable housing

    Note: This article was written as a speech to the first annual Jane Jacobs Award at Met Council Housing. Jane Jacobs wrote 12 wide-ranging, brilliant books. In them she wove together ideas about cities, city life, politics, economics, and social and cultural issues, so it’s hard to succinctly...Read more

  • How to create a bottom-up coalition for change

    Building a Better Burb can sometimes fall victim to raw politics unless public officials see grassroots support.
    Note: This document is one of a series of tools created for Build a Better Burb, the Hub for Great Suburban Design. The series emerged from the Build a Better Burb Sprawl Retrofit Council in Miami, Florida, in March, 2016—an event aimed at expanding transportation choice, sense of place, and...Read more