Category: placemaking

now we all want to live in a college town, by daylight

On By Chuck WolfeIn pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability, urban views9 Comments

Here is further evidence for last night’s twilight apparition: A walkable, to-scale college town can present the ideal of a pedestrian and bike-oriented retail core, and a viable mix of uses which serve the needs of both the adjacent institution and a classic town center. Look to this model for what can go right, and wrong, with attempts to implement successful communities. In particular, the panoramae below provide the street-level sense of opportunity to meld physical, economic, aesthetic considerations with multi-modal traffic and service provision.

now we all want to live in a college town

On By Chuck WolfeIn infill development, pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability, urban views7 Comments

College towns are often the most walkable, serving a generation not yet auto-centric, and offering the classic mixture of businesses for the academy and small town “Main Street”. Here, Moscow, Idaho is no exception, with the University of Idaho a short walk to the west of downtown.

paparazzi photos reveal the urban odd couple

On By Chuck WolfeIn everyday urbanism, pedestrianism, placemaking, politics, sustainability, urban administration, urban viewsLeave a comment

A content analysis of popular press, blogs and social media would show most urban-related content currently addresses the up and down relationship of the two environments depicted below in paparazzi photos from Seattle.

sustainable reuse of American icons and the new urban future

On By Chuck WolfeIn compact development, pedestrianism, placemaking, sustainability4 Comments

Today, Kaid Benfield (via his friend Steve Davis) reminded us that features of new walkable livability initiatives have small town roots, casting rural-based opposition to the White House’s urban agenda as ironically ill-founded.

If accessed by a small town-style walk, could drive-ins turned pedestrian and soda fountain artifacts become the town squares of our urban future?

Detroit, laboratory for urbanists everywhere

On By Chuck WolfeIn housing, infill development, pedestrianism, placemaking, politics, sustainability, transit oriented development, urban administration2 Comments

An April 4 Detroit Free Press editorial issued a call to action: Start now to implement the “brimming with hope” principles that could reinvent Detroit by 2020.

When you assemble all the proposals, plans and dreams that have been advanced in recent months, the city of 2020 looks dramatically different than it looks today: smaller, smarter, greener, more mobile, with more job opportunities — and once again the pounding heart of a metropolitan region.

You see thousands of kids attending schools that work for them. You see people using light rail and boarding buses in a transit system that serves them. You see a gleaming, growing medical complex; banners being hoisted to the rafters of a new sports arena; and people tending little farms that nourish their neighborhoods in more ways than one. You see convention-goers strolling a crowded RiverWalk and bicyclists coasting the downhills of a new trail network.

The editorial is a challenge not just to Detroit, but to America, consistent with the dreams of the urbanist generation.

As we wrote in Crosscut last October:

[W]e can learn from Detroit and other places where our worst urban fears have been realized. There, consolidation is demanded from chaos, and visionaries have emerged from the ruins.

This post has been updated and appears in the April 10, 2010 seattlepi.com, here.