The Public Realm Reclaimed – At Last

Rochester's public realm: reclaimed during a pandemic. Image by Maria Furgiuele And Chicago's, in Ravenswood. Image by Jim Peters In the end, my years-long campaign to alter the presence of the automobile in our cities has always had two underlying and perhaps not very well hidden objectives. First has been a desire to reclaim and …

Present City, Future City: India

In the Old City, Ahmedabad. In February and March we spent a month visiting seven cities across India, from south to north, from west to east. Our time there was completely exceptional: invaluable, surprising, educational, revealing, depressing, infuriating, eye-opening and more. I continue to reflect on those days, and it has taken me until now …

ROC the Riverway (really – that’s what they’re calling it)

Ugh. Somehow, we seem incapable of naming any important planning or design initiative anything other than ROC. ROC is the airport code for Rochester. Must we really persist in this ROC title for our restaurants, bars, carpet cleaners, dry cleaners, home inspectors, car repair shops, bagel shops, theaters, barber shops, moving companies?... And urban design …

TEDx Rochester

We're giving a talk for TEDx Rochester on November 4th. You can go to http://www.tedxrochester.org/ to learn more. We will be live-streamed around town, so why not take a look and see what's up? You can find the live-stream here: http://new.livestream.com/tedx/Rochester. The talks start at 10:00am. And stay tuned for any after-talk video that may pop …

Once We Get Through This….

Photo by Toby Melville, REUTERS. Heard on the streets of the city this afternoon, a gaggle of folks walking in the opposite direction, very much engaged in their conversation. One of the guys says, "Once we get through this...." He meant this economic recession or meltdown or whatever you call it. Which got me to thinking. …

Economic Calculus: I Need Help

By Tom Toles, the Washington Post. In 9th grade, Mrs. Studer told me I was a total dud at math. I guess she was right: I just can't figure out how things are supposed to work in times like these. I think I need some help with these equations. Finally, folks seem to be spending …