• Serenbe

    In the Chattahoochee Hills of northwestern Georgia, a neighborhood was built to protect the rural land outside of Atlanta. This neighborhood would later become known as Serenbe, a blend of “serene” and “be.” Serenbe founders, Steve Nygren and Maire Lupo Nygren, constructed Serenbe with the vision...Read more
  • Framework for Empowerment Buenos Aires ground level

    A Framework for Empowerment

    Design enables social transformation
    This plan proposes the revitalization of Villa 31, an 80-year-old squatter-built shantytown in Buenos Aires, for its long-time residents—using bottom-up and top-down implementation concepts. A Framework for Empowerment builds on the local, low-tech recycling industry—13.6 percent of adults in Villa...Read more
  • Sweet City Curridabat Pond

    Sweet City: Defeating the City-Nature Antagonism

    Recovering urban nature for a healthier city
    The first city in Costa Rica to adopt form-based coding has created a citywide plan to connect urban neighborhoods to nature. Sweet City is the next phase of a Charter Award-winning plan of 2014. The majority of Curridabat’s 72,500 citizens live among public spaces dominated by asphalt— inhibiting...Read more
  • An aerial of the plan.

    Davidson’s Rural Area Plan

    Visionary code protects rural lands
    The Rural Area Plan (RAP) for Davidson uses a form-based code for aggressive rural land conservation. Sixty-five percent of the countryside is preserved over six square miles, allowing for the development of compact hamlets and villages on one-third of the area. The plan was adopted in the spring...Read more