The Shifting Boomer Bulge: More bad news for America’s housing crisis?

This is the first part of a two-part conversation with Arthur C. (Christian “Chris”) Nelson, professor emeritus of urban planning and real estate development at the University of Arizona, as well as presidential professor emeritus of city and metropolitan planning at the University of Utah. Part Two is available here. More about Dr. Nelson and…

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Lessons from the Pandemic: Housing, Retail, Broadband

This is the second in a series of conversations about what comes next in local government policies and processes. Geoff Koski is president of the Bleakly Advisory Group, providing advice to real estate professionals, governments, and non-profit organizations dealing with a wide- range of real estate and economic development-related issues. Read the first post in…

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The Other Side of Anxiety? Realism. And maybe hope.

When the dust settles after the current traumas, I think we’ll see this time in our lives and in our nation’s history as a period in which what we’ve learned about human psychology, democracy and policy-making at every scale has exposed weaknesses in ourselves and our institutions that will take a while to fix. And…

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CNU 25 Seattle: Highlights from the silver anniversary

Last week was the 25th annual Congress for the New Urbanism, where 1,400 city planners, architects, developers, economists, and mayors from around the world gathered to discuss the future of cities. Hosted in collaboration with the Urban Land Institute, comprised of an additional 6,000 developers and builders, the two events brought significant inspiration and insight…

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Where Thinking About the End is a Good Place to Begin

In this time of increasing uncertainty, of trepidation about what the future holds for ourselves, our families, our communities, wouldn’t it be great if there were something we could absolutely count on? Something we could predict with 100 percent confidence no matter who we are or where we live or what particular challenges lie ahead?…

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The City as NORC: It’s the people thing

When The New York Times used my wife and me as examples in a story about retirees’ growing preferences for urban life, it was a chance to literally walk the talk. I’ve been writing about my Baby Boomer cohort for all my career, first in the ‘60s alternative press, then in newspaper and magazine stories…

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Inclusive Cities: Inclusion equals diversity plus equity

The placemakers way is to enable the triple bottom line of resilience: environment, economy, and society, trying to balance the needs of people, planet and profit. And yet it’s always easier to measure the impacts of our collective choices on profit — or even on the planet — than it is on people. We’ve blogged…

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