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Design Mobility Neighborliness Regulation Suburbia Transit

Designing for Resilience: Policies Are Great, but Design Is What Will Change Your Life

I recently married my boyfriend Rob and moved ten minutes from my home in Sanger Heights into a garage flat belonging to a couple from our church. Rob had been living here for a few months already and as we headed home from our honeymoon in Santa Fe, I began thinking about what our new […]

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Design Mobility Transit Travel

Don’t Just Add Trains, Sidewalks, and Bike Lanes to Your City

During our honeymoon last month, my newly minted husband and I ventured from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Albuquerque in search of a burrito from Sadie’s, an infamous, 60-plus-year-old, family-run restaurant that Rob grew up frequenting with friends and family during the Albuquerque-based chapter of his high school career. Although a typical “Texas is best” […]

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Design Mobility Transit

Rethinking Normal: Five Ways to Explore Your City Without a Car

As more Americans receive COVID-19 vaccines, “getting back to normal” has become the phrase du jour. But when it comes to the design of our cities and neighborhoods, some city leaders are wondering if getting back to normal is truly worth it. Should we really be going back to relying on cars for every single outing? Some […]

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Design Mobility Transit Walkability

Three ways cars disrupt our sense of place

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I lived in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. As August rolled around, I made a spontaneous move and have spent the latter part of the pandemic from Waco, Texas. My experience in these two extremely different contexts has given me a chance to see how the […]

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Design Mobility Transit Walkability

Three Questions to Ask While Walking Your City

I’ve written previously about why it probably sucks to walk around your city. But I still think you should do it if you really want to understand the built environment around you. At the end of the day, no matter how many machines and robots whirl and march into our future, cities are primarily human […]

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Design Mobility Transit Walkability

5 Reasons Why Walking Your City (Most Likely) Sucks

As a traveling journalist, I have walked dozens of cities. I’ve walked the streets of Paris and Rome, the streets of forgotten small towns in the American South. I’ve walked exciting historic corridors and empty suburban wastelands. I’ve walked through ghettos, homeless encampments, busy intersections and luxurious, mansion-lined residential streets.  With every walk, I’ve discovered […]