“I’m not sure that the era of sprawl is over, but the paradigm of unlimited suburban and exurban growth has definitely shifted.” - Ed McMahon, senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute (from High Country News).
Smart Growth Around America checked in on the one-year anniversary of Chris Leinberger’s much discussed Atlantic article foretelling the rise [...]

Philadelphia’s “Green Guru” Mark Alan Hughes says it’s little steps like getting city departments to know how much their electricity bill is that can make the Greenworks plan work.  Yesterday, the City released an ambitious plan to make Philadelphia the most environmentally-friendly city in the nation by 2015. Hughes appeared on WHYY’s Radio Times this [...]

by Jason Kleinman
Wouldn’t it be nice to walk through an urban oasis surrounded by open space, fresh farmer markets, and clean air?  According to Mayor Michael Nutter, this is exactly where our city is headed.  This morning, Nutter formally unveiled Greenworks Philadelphia, his plan to make Philadelphia “The greenest city in America” by 2015.
The plan [...]

A few weeks back when Sugarhouse revealed their plans to put a mega concrete parking box on a prime piece of the Delaware waterfront, I wondered how Pulitzer-prize finalist and scourge of unimaginative developers Inga Saffron would react.
It turns out, she must have been on her tour of California at the time because she didn’t [...]

I was going to write a little about a recent column by Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron in which the scourge of design-challenged developers takes on a Queen Village Neighbors Association decision to allow a couple of homes to be built with (gasp!) street-level, front-facing garages!
But that seems like pretty small potatoes compared to the [...]

Greg Heller at Urban Direction points out that the Canadians appear to have a little crush on the City of Brotherly Love.
So don’t worry, Philadelphia. Even though a riverfront casino with a 3,000-space parking garage is now on schedule to open within a year (more on that later, I’m sure), we can take comfort in [...]

I wrote more extensively on Unobstructed View about the benefits for cyclists of Lower Merion’s efforts to connect to the Schuylkill River bike path via the Manayunk railroad bridge. It’s great for recreational and commuter cyclists as well as pedestrians in Lower Merion and Manayunk who want to explore each other’s various shops and restaurants.
But [...]

PlanPhilly reports that Frank DiCicco successfully pulled of a meeting of this city’s version of the Hatfields and McCoys - the Central Delaware Advisory Group and developers and owners of land along the Delaware.
Unfortunately, CDAG, a group that was born out of the most public of processes and committed to a level of openness not [...]

If your consumption of news is limited to cable news networks and national broadcasts, you probably think that the whole country is crashing down in flames around us. And, in certain parts of the country, well… that’s exactly what’s going on.

But cheer up!

While New York is contemplating large sections of Broadway to auto traffic, The 13th Floor reports that Boston is considering going in the opposite direction for one of its pedestrian shopping malls. The folks in Boston are seeking to take a desolate section of the city and liven it up by sending in the clowns, [...]