The Atlantic recently published How to Decimate a City, a hard-hitting look at Syracuse, it’s unparalleled concentration and consequences of urban poverty, and the reasons it got the way it is. The author points to the elevated I-81 through the heart of the city as an urban planning mistake extraordinaire that hastened and exacerbated the most intractable […]

Ithaca Commons, a forty-year-old no-car zone covering several blocks in downtown Ithaca, New York, is considered a pioneer in the “pedestrian mall” concept in the U.S.  The City of Ithaca just unveiled a major renovation of the Commons. Such pedestrian-only districts have been tried in other parts of the country, with mixed success. Charlottesville, Virginia’s […]

photo of Syracuse’s downtown Armory Square (syracuse.com) “I want to develop artists, not destroy them, and they simply can’t afford to live and work there anymore.” This quote is from a New York City gallery director who decided to move his operation from Brooklyn to Detroit. The quote appeared in a recent New York Times […]