Category: Thoughts on Development Planning

Detroit, as with many large US cities, is absent of residential life in its dowtown…but, there are signs of regeneration and life.  All vacant buildings in the downtown were in some state of rehabilitation with a growing residential marketplace desperate to make the downtown home once again.  This trend was so prevalent that new buildings were starting construction on vacant parcels.  Something’s going on here…how does this happen?  What’s driving this influx of people back to cities?

We are back from Detroit, and our annual pilgrimage to the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU 24).  As many know, Detroit, MI went bankrupt in July 2013.  So, as urbanists, we were both curious and intrigued to see how the images of vacant and boarded-up buildings (those that remained) could be transformed.

The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) released an article on how the negative stigma associated with congestion is not inherently bad and that we often underestimate its impact on a city. The article outlines a list of suggestions on how to turn “bad” congestion into something that might positively affect the future of urban design.