Lately, there is no shortage of reporting about big urban ideas and visions of what will make places great.

For David Roberts, writing in Grist, the answers are conceptual, e.g. assurance of ecological sustainability and density, while...

Could sustainability principles pave the path to peace?

President Obama's strategic statements about the Middle East last Thursday (and as clarified to AIPAC on Sunday) were not city-specific, but took me back one year to Jerusalem and in-person perspectives on the city's prospects.

My 2010

Visits to other cities can easily create "grass is always greener responses," which are hardly complete analyses of a place and its problems.

Yet these human, spontaneous gestalts are worth noting, because they say something about the immediate look...

Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it.

--Pierre Bonnard, Painter and Printmaker

Consider the role color plays in an everyday urban experience, how and why.  No  matter that some aspects of color in the city are naturally occurring; manipulation of...

Here's a review and look forward, focused on the expanding redefinition of American urban spaces, such as sidewalks and streets, and a symbiotic recalibration of the flanking private domain.

In a recent, related piece, I observed context and possibilities:

American placemaking advocates [should] consider pragmatic approaches when

Today's efforts to recreate elements of the city, of whatever prescription of urbanism (e.g., "new," "landscape" or "ecological") often turn on issues once considered in design competitions long forgotten.

Central to such efforts, new or old, is the relationship of a city segment to the surrounding urban area and the...

Generally speaking, the description of any Utopia that involves many details is apt to be an unconvincing way to present a principle which can be applied effectively in practice with immense flexibility as to details...

(Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. to Henry James, July 10, 1924, Papers, Regional Plan...

Last week, just after returning from Africa, I reviewed comparative, "then and now" photographs of Brainerd, Minnesota, presented by Chuck Marohn on the Strong Towns blog.

A vital 1890s street scene showed, as Chuck summarized, bustling urban...

At the interface of tradition, tourism and sustainability, dramatic photographs can tell a story that is hardly apparent at first glance.

A stone's throw from the traffic and diversity of nearby Arusha, Tanzania, a village community -- what we might call neighborhood --...

Surely every self-styled urban visionary, and quotation-centric student of prose, knows the magic words attributed to monumental, "city beautiful" Chicago architect Daniel Burnham: "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized."

A recent case-in-point came two years ago,...

On March 8, Professor Edward Glaeser, a currently popular author on the subject of cities, applied his template for success to Seattle in a New York Times blog piece. He found our city to exemplify an ideal urban model, a former one-industry wonder...

Human settlement is often driven by topography, viewpoints and strategic advantage.

Independent towns and urban neighborhoods alike share an historic affinity for hills. Terrain-intensive cities like San Francisco and Seattle are no...

In an era when the term "sustainability" is increasingly cast as mere jargon, it is worth noting a sincere and authentic application of family, business and building which gives credence to the term.

Seattle entrepreneur, developer and philanthropist Mark Schuster's Lofty...

Today's populist urbanism celebrates the rise of the city, whether in sound bytes on the Daily Show, by census or science. Along the way, some note nostalgia when the long-time "Mom and Pop" store closes and formerly distinct urban places...