Cities & Planning

Religion, art and politics have all led to the minimalist idea of "less is more". Dominic Lutyens explores the ideas and aesthetics behind pared-back simplicity.

On New Years' Day, several Stanford scientists joined CBS' Scott Pelley on "60 Minutes" to discuss the mass extinction crisis. No one had any good news.

Equium has developed a new thermo-acoustic heat pump core that reportedly produces 3 kW to 4 kW of heat for every kilowatt of power it consumes. It says the refrigerant-free device could generate domestic hot water at temperatures of up to 80 C.

Tollefson Plaza in downtown Tacoma confounds me. It’s an attractive space next to a bustling university campus and an art museum. It is adjacent to a pedestrian urban trail, near the city’s convent…

On December 30, Seattle Times published this "timely" article written by the paper's chief commentator of an economic boom that began a few years after the crash of 2008 and apparently came to an end when Black Lives Matter protesters shut down the East Precinct, Jon Talton: "Will Seattle ever reclaim its status as a vibrant ‘superstar city’?" Talton begins Seattle's story "a century ago," though I would have been impressed if he found a...

Across the street from Azabu Juban there's a neighborhood called Mita Koyamachou. In the middle of Tokyo it's a few streets of small homes and pre-war buildings where it seems like time has stopped. Early in 2023 demolition begins.

The New Year presents the opportunity to consider the possibilities that lay ahead for our next 365 days encircling the sun. Because at The Urbanist we are pretty obsessed with places, especially i…

A once common arrangement that can help or strain work-life balance is being sustained by a new generation of New Yorkers.

From chief heat officers to circular communities, cities are constantly serving as laboratories for bold new models. Here are a few favorites from the past year.

Supply chains are clogged and driving is getting more dangerous. 2023’s autonomous vehicles could help fix both.

Companies like Vivos and Rising S offer luxury shelters with amenities that include underground pools, gardens, horse stables, and entire villages.

Anonymous Desert 2011 A German language translation of Desert can be found here: anarchistischebibliothek.org/library/anonym-desert, and a Greek language...

The Federal Highway Administration has a chart full of answers to that question you might find useful.

This page is a summary of the different cost classes we look at in this blog; each class listed below is explored in detail in its own post. Using the 2013 AECOM high-speed rail study as a starting point, numerous additional sources have been used to either confirm or question the reliability of the

This article examines the capital costs of recent rail transit projects and describes some factors that help to explain the differences in costs.

Is our love of cars so overwhelming? Or do cars just make us dumb?

The “crazy worms” remaking forests aren’t your friendly neighborhood garden worms. Then again, those aren’t so great either.

Restarted by Governors Inslee and Brown in 2019, the IBR has been on a glidepath toward repeating the mistakes of the failed Columbia River Crossing project. When state lawmakers from both Oregon a…

"If my choices are to have wealth but no job, or to have a job but no wealth, I’d rather have the wealth. But we don’t have to choose: we can have both wealth and jobs, if we don’t go around breaking all the darned windows." ~ Michael C. Munger

Global heating will set the stage for extreme weather everywhere in 2023. The consequences are likely to be cataclysmic.

Although electric vehicles have advanced significantly, many other forms of mobility do not share their shortcomings.

Earlier this month, a mixture of snow and freezing rain set a stark backdrop as 30 residents, including families with children, couples, singles, and people with pets, moved into their new heated a…

Europe’s energy crisis is forcing companies to switch strategies or close down. The industry’s future hangs in the balance.