Amid the roads, sidewalks and places that you have visited before, there are often embedded patterns to uncover, read and reinterpret.

Will the prime square footage occupied by Borders have similar 'third place' potential once reclaimed? Will replacement uses provide the equivalent fusion business purposes of books, coffee, lecture and song?

When a small branch of a local ice cream business opened within the laundromat up the street, it was evidence that today's land use regulations are becoming more in sync with changing urban reality.

If our cities must be dense to be competitive and sustainable, we must also look with care to the potential displacement of uses, institutions or traditions -- not to mention the artifacts we will leave behind.

More so than public squares -- which require a conscious set-aside of assembled space -- corners naturally result from crossroads, the elemental feature of travel between places.

Cities are hubs of human interaction, and the urban experience can be enhanced by authentic participation in the dynamics of a place and transitions to nearby venues.

What if American cities legislated brighter color amid windows, balconies planted green and encouraged flags and hanging laundry? What if homeowner associations and rental contracts required vegetation and decoration?

Once a big idea is vetted -- whether in an authoritarian or democratic way -- what assures its success? Most particularly, what if, from Day One, the vision pushes comfort zones of the achievable; politically, legally or monetarily?

Portland has captured the imagination of a new generation of city-oriented populists.

How can we marshal the potential of urban color while retaining a legally appropriate balance between public regulation of the private realm?

Here, from afar, is more evidence that street and square, beach and byway all have a greater and unrealized multipurpose capacity, ripe for recalibration in ever-evolving America.

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 appl...

Edward Glaeser's recent piece on Seattle is great press -- the stuff of boosterism and for use as evidence in corner of higher education, in the face of looming budget cuts in Olympia, our state capital.