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The Suburb Wooing Millennials With Avocados, Kombucha, and Cheap Houses In a new comic-strip ad campaign, Homewood, Illinois, bills itself as a hip, diverse, urban neighborhood that Millennials can afford. The only catch: It’s in the suburbs. CityLab, April 9, 2018 Four friends in early middle age are chatting on a small-town sidewalk. “So, what…

The Case for Putting Amazon’s HQ2 in the Suburbs If it’s built on the urban fringe, HQ2 doesn’t have to be an inward-looking campus marooned in sprawl. It could be the mother of all suburban retrofits. CityLab, Jan. 26, 2018 Last week, we learned which 20 cities made the not-exactly-short list to host Amazon’s second headquarters. These…

The House of the Future Is Elevated We can build homes to sit above flood waters so people can ride out the Harveys of the future, but it won’t be easy or cheap. CityLab, December 8, 2017 Three months after Hurricane Harvey churned through Texas, dumping 51 inches of rain and damaging an estimated 150,000…

Landmarking Fannie Mae Building Will Dilute Historic Preservation Washington City Paper, Oct. 19, 2017 In July 1958, the Equitable Life Insurance Co. moved from 14th St. NW to a brand-new office building uptown. Constructed for the then-princely sum of $2.25 million, the company’s new headquarters spread out from a cupola-topped entrance in two long arms…

Designing for a Better Democracy From graphic explainers of government regulations to board-game-style community workshops, new MacArthur Fellow Damon Rich uses design to make cities more democratic. CityLab, Oct. 13, 2017 The urban designer and planner Damon Rich has an old-school cell phone—a deliberate defense against being constantly bombarded by emails. When he got a…