• A wall rises in Buffalo

    Even a city that is getting better makes mistakes, such as a massive concrete wall around a development in a city where population and urbanism are growing.
    In early March, 2020, days before the entire nation came to a sudden pandemic halt, I was in Buffalo, New York, for a charrette co-sponsored by CNU. It was brutally cold—as Buffalo can be in winter—and that may have contributed to my poor judgment (it’s hard to think clearly about urbanism when...Read more

  • US 1 is getting a public square

    Generous public space amenities, including a square and wide sidewalks with trees, are key to transit-oriented suburban retrofit on Route 1 in South Florida.
    US Route 1 is the primary federal highway south of Miami (where I-95 ends), and consists of a 5-7 lane suburban arterial on the 25 mile stretch to Florida City, Florida. There’s nothing like a human-scale public space on that corridor, but that reality is changing. Developers A&E Partners are...Read more

  • A man who loved and observed cities

    A biography of William Whyte reveals a big thinker with a keen eye for details and a trust of his own observations over dominant planning theories—a trait he shared with collaborator Jane Jacobs.
    William H. “Holly” Whyte is best known, in urban planning circles, for his sociological research into what makes public spaces successful, as reported in his 1980 book, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces . Whyte, who died in 1999 at 81, used cameras, careful observation, and collection of data...Read more

  • Green, redevelopment fills hole created by ‘urban renewal’

    A New England-style green creates the site for mixed-use and affordable housing at the center of a historic city.
    Meriden, Connecticut, tore down its industrial heart in the middle of the 20 th Century to build an enclosed shopping mall that soon failed, replaced by a strip mall that flooded, replaced by offices that were flooded and demolished. The series of fiascos at the center of this city of 60,000,...Read more