Planning and Design
Katrina Cottages Finding Traction on Gulf Coast
Neighborhood Sites in the Works Finally, after more than three and a half years, one of the key New Urbanist efforts in the wake of Hurricane Katrina on the Mississippi Gulf Coast is beginning to grow legs. And perhaps more importantly, the models being created have implications for affordable housing everywhere. (In the interest of…
Read MoreOn this Earth Day Anniversary: Hints of Convergence
Green meets Smart Growth meets Healthy Communities As 21st century crises and concerns began stacking up, it had begun to look as if Smart Growth priorities were going to have to compete for attention and resources with other burning issues. Such as: Climate change, peak oil, community affordability, health care costs, and now the struggling…
Read MoreDPZ Promotes Mall Makeovers
Firm Suggests Model Legislation in Florida Will Florida put the “suburban retrofitting” movement on the fast track? Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. (DPZ) is providing state officials with a legislative template to do just that. On April 20, the Miami-based design and planning firm submitted to Florida’s Division of Community Assistance a suggested draft for a State…
Read MoreAn Urban Fix for Suburbia? Tackling Growing Problems Through Retrofits
Watching Andres Duany go through images at the final presentation of the Lifelong Communities charrette in Atlanta, it quickly became clear how many of the goals of the ambitious planning effort could be lumped under one category: retrofitting suburbia. “In one way or another,” said DPZ principal Galina Tahchieva, “all of the interventions we suggested…
Read MoreAtlanta’s Lifelong Communities Charrette Delivers the Goods
Atlanta’s landmark charrette on planning for “Lifelong Communities” wrapped on February 17, with an Andres Duany presentation to a downtown auditorium packed with some 500 people. On February 11, the opening night of the weeklong event, Kathryn Lawler, who coordinated the ambitious project for the Atlanta Regional Commission, explained that one key goal for the…
Read MoreAtlanta, AARP, DPZ Attack Challenges of Aging in Place
The New Urbanist mantra for neighborhood planning is to go for compact, connected, and complete. Well, one critical component of completeness, that of making communities comfortable – and practical – for residents of all ages, has been sort of assumed by NU planners. Yet it’s taken an effort by the nation’s primary advocacy group for…
Read MoreWhat We’re Reading: A Legal Guide to Urban and Sustainable Development
It probably won’t surprise most folks that the pursuit of more traditional (and sustainable) urban patterns is often thwarted by… lawyers! But here’s a refreshing change: Two of them – Dan Slone and Doris Goldstein, with Andy Gowder – have just released A Legal Guide to Urban and Sustainable Development for Planners, Developers and Architects,…
Read MoreGluttony and Glut: Finding the New Normal
How serious is the implosion of the once-booming urban condo market? And what does the downturn say about the prospects for housing in urban centers? A piece in the business section of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution seems to say it all. Desperate to unload some units in “a stagnant market,” says the sub-headline, an Atlantic Station developer…
Read MoreWhat We’re Reading: Retrofitting Suburbia
Considerable attention has been paid to development in urban cores and new neighborhoods on the exurban periphery. But in between, the out-of-date and unsustainable developments in existing suburbs also provide enormous opportunities for regeneration. Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, is a comprehensive guidebook that illustrates how…
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