Envision Frederick County is very excited to launch our new (and free) speaker series, this Friday evening, with a great presentation from Kaid Benfield, one of the nation’s foremost … [Read more...]
'Green' sprawl is still sprawl
EDITOR'S NOTE: While Kaid Benfield's blog entry below is not specifically about the highly controversial Monrovia Town Center development proposed for 457 acres of farmland at the intersection of Route. … [Read more...]
PREVIEW: People Habitat: 25 Ways to Think About Greener, Healthier Cities
To my friends at Envision Frederick County, I am immensely excited to announce that my new book, People Habitat: 25 Ways to Think About Greener, Healthier Cities, has been completed and fully edited, … [Read more...]
The Night Sky: Sometimes you don’t know what you had when it’s gone!
A couple days ago, in his always excellent blog, my friend Kaid Benfield shared a post entitled "Reclaiming the night sky," about our increasing inability to see, enjoy and even be inspired by the night sky. In his … [Read more...]
Nurturing and strengthening the urban commons: some beginning principles (Part 2 of 2)
As I wrote last fall, to move more deliberately toward anything resembling a sustainable future, we need to use land more efficiently, building more compactly, with higher densities of homes and businesses per acre than … [Read more...]
Sustainability and the urban commons (Part 1 of 2)
My neighborhood has a “commons.” So does yours. The commons comprises those explicitly or, in some cases, implicitly shared resources in which the community as a whole has an interest. At a minimum, these include the … [Read more...]
The ten steps of walkability
In Jeff Speck’s excellent new book, Walkable City, he suggests that there are ten keys to creating walkability. Most of them also have something to do with redressing the deleterious effects caused by our allowing cars … [Read more...]
Three interesting views (and lists) about “Smart Growth”
This week's installment includes annotated links to three well-written, interesting and contrasting pieces - each with a new list - that offer a fresh, expanded or somewhat different perspective about basic Smart Growth … [Read more...]