Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
New Urbanism at its core promotes higher residential densities, a mix of residential and commercial land uses in close walking proximity, and a grid street pattern that promotes closer distances between residential and commercial destinations.22 Grid street patterns that have more intersections and smaller blocks also provide for multipurpose uses,
... See moreJohn MacDonald • Changing Places: The Science and Art of New Urban Planning
To generate exuberant diversity in a city’s streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable: 1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are in the place for dif
... See moreJane Jacobs • The Death and Life of Great American Cities
Hayward and Swanstrom argue that when injustice is tied up with the physical spaces of cities and the policies that create them, it becomes “difficult to assign responsibility for it—and hence difficult to change.” That’s why the curb cut’s history—a successful “editing” of the built environment that arrived via mandate of federal law—is so impress
... See moreSara Hendren • What Can a Body Do?: How We Meet the Built World
I think that the era of rigid zonal segregation is over. No longer can a city be simply divided into a series of discrete places: the place where I work, the place where I live, and the place where I want to spend my leisure time. This simplistic planning notion is about to change. People want to live in closer proximity to their work, and they wan... See more