Essays

The decision to tear down a building is rarely about the building. It is about land value, political will, and the stories a city chooses to tell about itself.

New Urbanism promised walkable streets and civic life. What it delivered, in many Florida developments, was a stage set.

The Brutalist buildings that Florida built in the 1960s and 1970s were acts of civic confidence. Most of them are now threatened.

The enclosed mall was a Florida invention, in spirit if not in patent. Its decline is a story about what Americans wanted from public space.

Minimum parking requirements are one of the most consequential pieces of urban policy in American history. Almost nobody talks about them that way.

The interstate highway program did not just move cars. It destroyed neighborhoods, displaced communities, and reorganized American cities around the automobile.