Share You’ve heard of the woman who lived in this house, haven’t you? Here’s the lead to the story in the Seattle P-I: Edith Macefield died at home, just the way she wanted. The Ballard (Wash.) woman who captured hearts and admirers around the world when she stubbornly turned down $1 million to sell her [...]
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‘Is America’s suburban dream collapsing into a nightmare?’
Share The above is the provocative headline on a story on cnn.com. After some description of the foreclosures in suburbia, the story focuses on the shifting attitudes of homeowners. “The American dream is absolutely changing,” (Christopher Leinberger, an urban planning professor at the University of Michigan and visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution,) told CNN. [...]
Good links
Share Be sure to check these links: The New York Times Magazine published an architecture issue titled “The Next City.” It tackles questions such as why are sidewalks essential for democracy and can an instant city ever feel like the real thing? City Journal features a story about how New Orleans is rebuilding from the [...]
Harrison Square financing: A primer
Share So, how does the financing of Harrison Square fit together? Here’s how the city’s Web site shows the relationships: OK, that clears that up.
Today’s rant: Abandon downtown!
Share From today’s News-Sentinel: When you drive on our terrible streets or drop your kids off at schools that are in dire need of repair, just think of all that could have been done with the money being wasted on downtown. But don’t think about how the financing of Harrison Square actually works. From the [...]
Will Harrison Square hate pedestrians?
Share Will the Harrison Square retail development in downtown Fort Wayne make pedestrians more or less welcome? And why would I ask the question, seeing as how there are so many pedestrians drawn on the architectural renderings? But there’s a potential problem with the above streetscape, and David Sucher’s Three Rules for urban design (PDF) [...]
Melborne: A Pedestrian Paradise
Share In preparation of Wednesday’s talk about walkable communities, take a 10-minute stroll through Melbourne. Go here to watch the video. Here’s a paragraph about Melbourne: There is an invaluable lesson here. In the early 90s, Melbourne was hardly a haven for pedestrian life until Jan Gehl was invited there to undertake a study and [...]
What does it cost to live in your neighborhood?
Share The Spaulding brothers do a great service by pointing us to the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, which shows the affordability of your Fort Wayne neighborhood based on housing and transportation costs. As you can guess, everything’s cheaper the closer you get to the core of the city. As the Spauldings say over on their [...]
Apocalyptic parking
Share There’s plenty to say about Parkview Hospital’s expansion up north and contraction on State Boulevard, but first, I wanted to address another angle of the proposed Shoppes on Broadway (sits plan shown above). Why do all new retail developments look like suburban strip malls? Why is the parking lot almost twice as large as [...]
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