DPZ 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 MoreWill Economic Woes Stall the Green Movement?
When we got a note from colleagues in Chattanooga, Tennessee, letting us know that that their city had not only crafted a Climate Action Plan but was also set to create a new office of sustainability, it got us to thinking: Is the competition for funding in the deepening recession going to kill momentum for…
Read More“Just Building Sprawl” is Over, But How?
When President Obama declared, before an audience in Ft. Myers, Florida, on Feb. 10, an end to “just building sprawl forever” (fast-forward to around 58:58 for the money quote), it may have signaled a change of venue in the battle over how the stimulus package is interpreted and applied. Up until Obama left Washington 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 MorePreservation Through Beauty
A recent New York Times article, examining struggling efforts to preserve the architecture of the New Deal, raises an interesting question: Why do some attempts at preservation capture broad-based attention and support while others wither away as fringe acts of desperation? The answer might have a lot to do with beauty. Because, while we’ve come…
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 MoreStimulus Showdown
When the Democrats’ $825 billion economic stimulus seemed to choose same-ol’ over sustainable, Smart Growth advocates and New Urbanists began turning up the heat. Favoring super highways over mass transit, rail, pedestrian, and biking alternatives incentivized sprawl for decades. And isn’t sprawl part of what got us in this mess? Smart Growth advocates believe investing…
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