It’s one thing for advocates and pundits like yours truly to advocate the greening of cities, towns and suburbs through environmentally responsible revitalization and land development.  But it’s quite another for local governments to develop and implement policy instruments that can make that goal easier, rather than harder, to achieve.  In many places, as I’ve [...]

The Ohkay Owingeh Tribe and Pueblo in New Mexico has returned to its roots with an award-winning, mixed-income housing project based on traditional Native forms.  It’s an exciting and inspiring project. Built by the Ohkay Owingeh Housing Authority explicitly as an alternative to sprawl-type housing, Tsigo Bugeh Village is a $5.3 million residential community that [...]

When you look at the official US drought monitor map, you immediately see that many American cities may be in the wrong places for long-term water sustainability.  In particullar, note the presence of “long-term,” severe-to-extreme drought conditions across most of Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona. It’s a very sobering set of facts, especially [...]

New research from Southern California has found that residents of neighborhoods with a central core of shops and services – a pattern typically found in older, traditional communities – walk nearly three times more often than do residents of neighborhoods whose nearest shops and services lie along a major arterial roadway – a pattern typically [...]

Years ago, I was motivated to participate in what became the cause of smart growth, and now for many of us has evolved into the cause of sustainable communities, because of the devastating effect of suburban sprawl on the American landscape.  For decades, the amount of developed land in our country has grown much faster than [...]

My favorite feature of NRDC’s new Washington office is the “living wall” that faces the common space where our kitchen is (and stands adjacent to the exit to what will eventually be our terrace, overlooking 15th Street). You can see it, just above, along with my pensive and photogenic colleague Marissa. Here’s another view. I’ve written about exterior [...]

OK, this is really fun, if not to be taken too seriously.  Last month, the BMW Guggenheim Lab launched Urbanology online , a quick and fun game that forces users to make choices about urban issues, producing some quick findings based on the choices. I have long been interested in using online gaming to teach users about [...]

Richard Florida , author, analyst, champion of great cities – and a fellow writer for The Atlantic – has picked 10 great city neighborhoods on the rise for USA Today .  These were mostly a bit gritty not long ago, but are now adding vitality practically by the day and embodying the rebirth of US cities. As reported in an article by Larry [...]

As this post is published, I am on vacation in Victoria, British Columbia, a wonderful city that – among other good things – is home to Dockside Green , which some people are calling the greenest development in the world. At least with respect to new, highly urban developments-in-progress, they may have a case to make: for starters, when NRDC, the [...]

I vacationed in Prague not long ago and wandered into a museum full of Barbie dolls . Pretty impressive, in its way. Barbie has come a long way over the years, and her newest incarnation is as an architect with a green home. Bridgette Meinhold previewed Architect Barbie in Inhabitat:

“Various people and organizations have long been vying to get Barbie [...]

When revitalization of our distressed neighborhoods is done well, it is almost unrivaled in its ability to advance simultaneously the “triple bottom line” of sustainability:  improving the environment, the economy, and social equity. Revitalization is good for the environment for the reasons I discussed in yesterday’s post ; it strengthens cities and allows them to absorb population and economic [...]

Detroit’s problems of urban distress, decay, and inner-city abandonment are all too well-known . Yet the city remains host to some amazing architecture, creativity and resilience. I have come across no more impressive example than artist Tyree Guyton’s amazing, two-block Heidelberg Project. Named for the east-side street on which it sits, the project was initiated in 1986 by Guyton and [...]

I believe one of the indicators of a healthy community – the kind of place that is likely to be loved and endure – is good evidence of creative expression.  Whether it’s painting, photography, music, dance, sculpture, performance or something else, people like being around artists who inspire not just our rational selves but also our [...]

Amazingly, the video below is the first time I have seen and heard the late Jane Jacobs speak. Everyone in my world knows her work and her wisdom, of course: she was voted number one in Planetizen’s 2009 poll of urban thinkers . Her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities was immensely influential to the field of urban planning.  [...]

At the bottom of this post is a terrific video tour of DC’s Dupont Circle neighborhood, featuring my friend Susan Piedmont-Palladino, architect, educator, curator at the National Building Museum, and Dupont Circle resident. But first some photos and thoughts: Like residents of most great cities, Washingtonians can be passionate about our neighborhoods, celebrating, say, the lively [...]

New York’s City’s hugely successful and justly celebrated High Line wasn’t the first elevated urban railroad bed to be converted into a much-loved linear park.  Today, as we mark the national holiday of France, let’s also pay tribute to the elevated park in Paris that NYC planning director Amanda Burden acknowledges as the model for the High Line: la [...]

I find that I am almost always thinking about the quality of places. Hanging out with the likes of David Dixon , Victor Dover , and Steve Mouzon will do that to you. And I am especially thinking about places – as a concept – this week, because on Friday I was told that a presentation on NRDC’s sustainable communities agenda is actually due [...]

My office is in the process of moving from one downtown DC building to another.  This means a lot of things, not all of them good, and one of them is the physical act of moving.  When we show up at our new location next week, all my office belongings will be in boxes and [...]

Jamestown Mall, 16 miles north of downtown St. Louis, Missouri, is an environmental disaster. Built on farmland in an area rich with environmentally sensitive fields and floodplains, and completely automobile-dependent, it was built in 1973 – the heyday of shopping-mall speculation – as leapfrog sprawl, in anticipation of more leapfrog sprawl to come around it. Designed to house [...]