sprawl

Webinar: Saving Our Suburbs Part 1

The formulas that guided suburban growth for more than 60 years no longer work. How can suburbs adapt to increasingly complex social, economic, fiscal, and environmental demands? What new approaches can help them secure their futures?

#OccupySprawl: Easier, Faster and More Productive

By Admin / On October 25th, 2011

Inspired by the recent popular discontent expressed so colorfully on Wall Street, I offer this proposal: Occupy Sprawl! People are not happy with the economy, with politics, with the government. Consider the physical surrounding of the protesters: the streets and squares in lower Manhattan where there are plenty of places to gather. Good urbanism provides good spaces for assembling and protesting. Our sprawling suburbs are devoid of such places. Where can people get together to show frustration (or to celebrate)? Are people happy with their physical environment in sprawl?

It Is a Matter of Scale or What is the Connection between Brain Size and Sprawl

By Admin / On September 26th, 2011

Scale is fundamental to urban design. If you get it right, and achieve a well-proportioned space between buildings, you have a sound basis to build upon. Even if the architecture is far from perfect, the public realm you create can be decent and comfortable. If you get the scale wrong and your master plan is built, even the most lustrous architecture won’t remediate the failure of space-making; people might still use it for utilitarian reasons (think the parking lot of a Wal-Mart), but will not enjoy it. Getting the urban scale right has been the mantra of planners and architects for ages.

Reduced or Not, the Mortgage Interest Deduction Can Help Fix Sprawl

By Galina Tachieva / On September 19th, 2011

As of late, the mortgage interest deduction (MID), a tax break many Americans have become accustomed to, has become the focus of much debate and controversy. It first became the subject of heated discussion when President Obama’s debt commission suggested its reduction. They argued that in addition to reducing deficits, such reform could also help slow the growth of sprawl.

Resiliant cities and the crash

By Peter Newman / On November 12th, 2008

The financial crash is developing a whole industry of responses that can tell us where we went wrong and what we must do to make our future more resilient, especially in our cities where so much of the crash is hurting. Finance and economics dominate this discussion. We believe that a better understanding of what makes cities work will help in this debate, especially how urban transport and energy are fundamental to how the urban economy works or doesn't. What caused the crash? Toxic loans are the target of most crash analysts.

Sprawl is the Root Cause of the Financial Crisis

By [node:field_contributor] / On September 22nd, 2008

Ask most people about the causes of the current financial meltdown and the proposed massive Federal bailout and it comes down to two factors. First, sub-prime mortgages were made to households unable to pay for them when rates readjusted upward. Second, these mortgages were subdivided, given dubious credit ratings, and dumped on unsuspecting investors. The beauty of this explanation is there is a beginning, middle (where we supposedly are now) and end-when the sub-primes have all readjusted. It portrays the crisis as a cyclical downturn; more brutal than most but ending in 2-3 years. Unfo