The environmental community needs to broaden our definition of what is "environmental."  First, my friend and frequent collaborator Lee Epstein posted a thoughtful blog entry on urban education and its effect on middle class families' housing choices and, thus, on suburban sprawl.  This week, I've had several occasions to...

Last week the Urban Land Institute and PriceWaterhouseCoopers released their well-regarded annual analysis, Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2010.  The report, which has been published for the last 30 years, aims to advise the industry "on where to invest, what to develop, which markets are hot, and how the...

Last week I had the honor of being one of seven smart growth types recruited by the American Institute of Architects to work with the city of Indianapolis and community residents on the model revitalization of a distressed urban neighborhood.  Really a composite of two neighborhoods divided by an old rail...

Fans of Larry David's hilariously cringeworthy hit comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm can't miss the Prius.  It's in every episode, one way or another, and has been as long as the show has been on the air, I think.  Replacing the bike hanging on the wall in David's iconic 1990s hit...

One of the more frustrating challenges for people in the field of sustainable development to overcome is a certain past-is-destiny argument from sprawl defenders who contend that past trends in favor of large-lot, dispersed, automobile-dependent development constitute proof that Americans want more of it in the future. 

In fact, signals...

My very favorite writings since becoming a blogger involve the revitalization of distressed communities, when done in an inclusive, sustainable fashion.  Whether in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Houston, Los Angeles, Boston, Atlanta, Milwaukee, or elsewhere (and I've written about all of those), the people in these places are giving us amazing...

I've written before about how rural utopias usually aren't as environmentally benign as they seem, while urban places - compact, walkable cities, suburbs, and towns - encourage lifestyles that are very low-impact on a per-capita basis.  It's one of the basic premises of smart growth.  David Owen, author of...

For me, a post about Dubai (the amazing pace of construction shown below) must begin with some thoughts about Las Vegas and about the king of rock'n'roll, who performed in that city often and whose impersonators there remain legion.  It's all connected, really.

By the time you read this, yours truly will be in Paris, and not for work, thank you very much.  We always make a point of staying within easy walking distance of Paris's wonderful park, the Jardin du Luxembourg.  We spend a little time there almost every day, and it's...

Andre Leroux, executive director of the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance, believes that New England's smaller cities hold the potential to absorb much development that could help save the region's countryside from sprawl.  But it will take some policy reforms to realign incentives away from greenfield development and back to...

Every summer, Boston's Asian Community Development Corporation has been hosting an informal grassroots Asian film festival in a vacant lot near the city's Chinatown Gate.  The final night this year (below) was moved to the nearby Chinatown Park.  As has been the case with a lot of this organization's...

A major challenge that has come with sprawl over the last half-century has been that growing up, maturing, and growing older has required, more often than not, moving to a new community at each new stage. This is largely because we have created subdivisions with only one type of housing,...

Distracted driving kills people.  One would think that would be enough.  But, sadly, in 44 states of the good old USA, you can blather away, cellphone to ear, and drive 60 miles per hour if you want.  In 33 states, you can go ahead and text-message while you're at it, even...

Our nation's metro regions need stronger tools to address transportation and land use issues.  I haven't turned to the issue of metropolitan regionalism in a while (last time was in April), but a new column by Bill Hudnut on Citiwire inspires me to do so again today. 

Several times each day, a military helicopter flies over my house.  It flies much closer to the ground than other aircraft, and it's seriously noisy.  We don't know why, exactly, since in DC you tend just to accept these things, but it started after September 11.  We live in a neighborhood...

My NRDC colleague Rachel Sohmer has produced a wonderful slide show illustrating how low-impact-development techniques for reducing stormwater runoff (sometimes called "green infrastructure") can successfully be integrated into the kinds of smart, urban environments that we need to revive cities and enable walkable, transit-oriented transportation patterns.  (Rachel last appeared...

Tyler Caine has a terrific post on his sustainability blog Intercon extolling climate change policy to get on the smart growth bandwagon.  He says it extremely well, so I am just going to quote...

For the most part, the climate change establishment - whether in government, industry, or the environmental community - has ignored the potential of land use strategies to provide significant reductions in carbon emissions while also producing multiple other environmental, economic, and societal benefits.  There have been grudging, passing mentions, usually...

This was going to be the final installment of my miniseries about Cincinnati's remarkable Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, but I'm on too much of a roll to finish today.  (Or, as my man Van would put it, "it's too late to stop now.")  But this is a nice problem to have,...

Last week I wrote the first installment of my miniseries about Cincinnati's remarkable Over-the-Rhine neighborhood.  As I wrote then, this distinct and historic quarter adjacent to Cincinnati's downtown is full of promise but bears considerable scars from decades of disinvestment, having declined in population from over 40,000 at its...