As a San Franciscan I get a lot of raised eyebrows when I mention that I recently bought property in Cincinnati. “Huh?” Then I walk them through it. Here’s the mom and pop business district along Hamilton Avenue in the Northside neighborhood during a recent Summer Streets event. This is a classic 1890’s Norman Rockwell … Continue reading Low Hanging Fruit
Shopping mall developers are exceptionally good at what they do. They’ve spent the last few generations refining all the little design elements that make a place profitable for retail trade. Their buildings go up fast, return a profit for investors, generate tax revenue for local government, and create jobs. That’s why the same big box … Continue reading The Barlow
Google My last post was about how Silicon Valley is evolving into an urban form that’s not quite leafy and open enough to be a suburb anymore, but not really vibrant and compact enough to be a proper city either. “Too thin to be jelly. Too thick to be jam.” The story got an unusually … Continue reading Silicon Valley: Jelly in the Jam
I was just out taking some photos for a blog post I’ve been toying with when I had an interaction with a member of the public that prompted me to write an entirely different story. My original intention was to describe how dead land under elevated highways can be reclaimed as quality public space instead … Continue reading Privacy in the Global Village
I was at a company Christmas party (not mine, by the way) last night and after about half an hour I ran out of my extremely limited supply of social skills. I ducked out into the city and started taking photos in the misty drizzle – a serious gift after a three year drought. … Continue reading Belden Place: Dark Alley Urbanism
San Francisco has an official program within its planning department that enables property owners to convert the parking spaces in front of their buildings to public mini-parks. See here. One of the best examples is the Deepistan National Parklet on Valencia Street. This particular home had two slivers of parking out front due to … Continue reading Deepistan National Parklet
North America is populated with endless examples of previously great neighborhoods that have fallen on hard times. How do we reactivate these places on a super tight budget without resorting to the usual Silver Bullet build-it-and-they-will-come model of the heavily subsidized casino, stadium, outlet mall, aquarium, or convention center which are all proving increasingly ineffective … Continue reading Shoestring Pre-vitalization: Walnut Hills
Gracen Johnson of Another Place For Me recently sent out a request for examples of adaptive reuses for outdated buildings. This is part of her exploration of what’s likely to happen to all the cheap, ugly, poorly constructed, disposable structures that currently litter the landscape all across North America. First, here’s an example of a completely … Continue reading Adaptive Reuse: Old Stuff, New Life
This video was edited by my friend Kirsten Dirksen of faircompanies.com This is a tale of how a hard core liberal achieved her goals by adopting a seriously conservative economic approach once she realized the usual government bureaucracies weren’t getting the job done. In 1980 Lois Arkin began her quest to build permanently affordable housing … Continue reading The Hippie Guide to Conservative Economics
Here’s the short version. The planning department in Lancaster, California did something that made property values increase by 9% this year while property values outside the project zone decreased by an average of 1% during the same period. This was in an economic environment where real estate hasn’t yet properly recovered from the 2008 crash. … Continue reading Adding Value and Building a Strong Town: Lancaster Blvd.
Granola Shotgun 