18th New Urbanist Congress: Best Ever?

What’s constitutes “best ever” depends on the takeaways, right? And when it comes to conferences, we could be talking takeaways that aren’t products of the event itself. Like maybe you got a job or connected with a soul mate. Let’s call that the upside of unintended consequences.

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Zoning: No Longer Just for Nerds

Remember when you could empty a room by trying to work zoning philosophy into a conversation? Okay, you can still do that in most places. But the coolness quotient is on the rise, we swear. Consider the adoption late last year of a form-based code in Miami, surely one of the most exotic political environments…

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Innovation on the Road to Oblivion?

Context is everything. The New York Times reports with unease that the FDA has approved statin drug Crestor’s use in a preventive capacity for those not currently diagnosed with cholesterol problems. The degree to which this represents innovation in medicine is a topic to be debated elsewhere. What matters to me is that such use…

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Love Ain’t Enough: Put Up or Shut Up

Like any next, big something, placemaking is growing up. And in its role as gawky adolescent, it’s beginning to realize something most of us have long since come to accept: You can’t skirt by on youthful good looks forever. Today, efforts to create more endearing and enduring surroundings are being subjected to decidedly grown up…

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ReTales: How Trying Too Hard Messes Up Main Street

In taking on the foibles of our built environment, author James Howard Kunstler makes a point of noting that he’s neither an architect nor planner. Instead, he’s the everyman, and his profession is dutifully pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. I’m in a similar position. I’m not an architect or planner either (or…

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An App for That (And that and that…)

One of the greatest selling points of the SmartCode, the DPZ-created version of a form-based unified development ordinance, has always been its customize-ability. First of all, it’s Transect-based, which immediately separates it from conventional codes that stamp out the same rules for development everywhere in the landscape. And since DPZ made it a free, open-source…

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You Betcha! It’s PechaKucha…

It used to be that I would claim to be too young to be cynical, but those days have long passed. The change is becoming apparent as I begin to prepare for a local PechaKucha event I’m participating in this weekend. It’s Global PechaKucha Day for Haiti to raise money and awareness for Haiti through…

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