"Form-based zoning" is something that I've never entirely understood. It's always explained to me as regulating form not use, and generally the example given is that form-based zoning will require certain design aesthetics but not dictate whether something is used as a residence or a place of … [Read more...]
How Important Are Skyscrapers, Really?
Mary Newsom, in a review of Ed Glaeser's new book Triumph of The City, makes some arguments about skyscrapers that I've never heard before: In his eyes, skyscrapers are the height of green living. But as architect Michael Mehaffy and others have pointed out, tall buildings can be less … [Read more...]
Duany bashes LEED standards
Andrés Duany, leader of the New Urbanism movement, comes out against LEED standards: He said that high-density development in urban locations which entail less reliance on private cars should get a free pass on energy efficiency or energy generation standards. "Don't make apartment dwellers … [Read more...]
Terrorism and cities, then and now
I don't want to give anyone the impression that I (or Robert Fogelson) thinks that the threat of nuclear war in the 1950s was anything but a minor footnote in the history of American decentralization, but this bit from Fogelson's Downtown (I finally finished! – review forthcoming) caught my … [Read more...]
Matt Yglesias attacks parking maximums, outs himself as a market urbanist
Matt Yglesias has been on a roll lately with the urbanism posts, all of which have a heavy "market urbanist" slant, but it's this post about parking reform in/around Boston (riffing off of this Boston Globe article) that seals the deal for me: Regulators pushing developers to build less parking … [Read more...]
Toronto’s new zoning code
by Stephen SmithMatt Yglesias points to an article about Toronto's new zoning code. The story is short on details, although the lowering of parking minimums near transit and overall simplification of the code seem like appealing features to Market Urbanists. I did, however, find a blog post … [Read more...]
Do We Need “New Urbanism” To Fix “Unwalkable Sprawl”?
At Volokh, Ilya Somin discusses a recent piece in the American Prospect (also linked from here) that favors “New Urbanism” to prevent “unwalkable” sprawl. Somin favors “voting with your feet” as the preferred method of satisfying location preferences. Unfortunately, voting options have … [Read more...]
The Story of I’On: Struggles of a New Urbanist Project
I recently googled upon a post at a blog called "Rub-a-Dub" that mentioned a land development project in Mount Pleasant, SC called I'On. I imagine the developers of the I'On "Traditional Neighborhood Development" (TND) community are sympathetic with Market Urbanism, as they named streets after … [Read more...]