Barracks Row, a small but generally prosperous commercial corridor in the southeastern Washington DC neighborhood of Capitol Hill, hosted a location of the regional chain Capital Teas—at least until last year. Just weeks after I made a sizable purchase at the location, at a time when I had no idea that it was struggling, the
In Pittsburgh’s Strip District, a neighborhood whose fortunes have waxed and waned with each decade, a successful restaurant stands at the foot of low-lying structure.I don’t know much about Cioppino and haven’t patronized the establishment, but the fact that it is still around today places it in the more successful half (if not one-quarter) of
It’s not hard at all to see how housing has evolved over the last century, especially when we visit the residential areas right next to a city center and compare them to the ones a few miles further out in the suburbs. Far more difficult is the distinction between homes from the 1980s and those
My latest article just posted in Urban Indy, despite the fact that it’s fundamentally about a new project going on in Washington DC. What’s the rationale behind this? Well, take a look. Here’s the underpass in question in Washington DC: And here’s the proposed art installation, known as Lightweave:Those attuned to urban development in Indy
By this point, the term “green building” has more or less entered common parlance: even if a sizable majority of people don’t know exactly what it entails, they can form a reasonably well-educated guess from the adjective. And, extending those contextual cues, they can speculate with similar accuracy on “green design”, since it loosely applies
In a district of rapidly escalating land values, the natural tendency is for extrusion. Buildings start to stretch upward, growing taller and taller to cram value into a patch of land that, even absent an edifice, is worth a lot. Despite the legal limitations to building heights, Washington DC still demonstrates this phenomenon perfectly. It is a
Though it sits on a prominent corner in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington DC, this repurposed old school building doesn’t hold a candle in opulence to some of the neighboring churches on 16th Street: It’s unlikely that many would consider it an ugly building, though I suspect historic preservationists would pull their hair out
Most of us who have spent any time in a city have come across at least one of these before, even if it didn’t necessarily stand out. It’s a building (or cluster of buildings) with an aged façade, concealing a much more contemporary structure behind that wafer-like sheath. The preferred label (morphologically incorrect though it
By this point, they’ve become almost as multifaceted as the dog breeds themselves. Much like murals, bike lanes, and decorative sidewalk benches, the dog park has become a fundamental amenity in urban settings…and not just the alpha and beta cities. The gamma, delta, and yes, even the communities that many would hesitate to call a
In the immediate years following the housing market’s catastrophic implosion, it was common to find half-finished suburban developments, where a handful of homes splayed out across a tangle of curvilinear streets. In most of these zombie subdivisions, the developer had already installed water/sewer, at least some of the paved roads, streetlights, road signs, maybe even
Barracks Row, a small but generally prosperous commercial corridor in the southeastern Washington DC neighborhood of Capitol Hill, hosted a location of the regional chain Capital Teas—at least until last year. Just weeks
In Pittsburgh’s Strip District, a neighborhood whose fortunes have waxed and waned with each decade, a successful restaurant stands at the foot of low-lying structure.I don’t know much about Cioppino and haven’t patronized
It’s not hard at all to see how housing has evolved over the last century, especially when we visit the residential areas right next to a city center and compare them to the
My latest article just posted in Urban Indy, despite the fact that it’s fundamentally about a new project going on in Washington DC. What’s the rationale behind this? Well, take a look. Here’s
By this point, the term “green building” has more or less entered common parlance: even if a sizable majority of people don’t know exactly what it entails, they can form a reasonably well-educated
In a district of rapidly escalating land values, the natural tendency is for extrusion. Buildings start to stretch upward, growing taller and taller to cram value into a patch of land that, even absent an
Though it sits on a prominent corner in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington DC, this repurposed old school building doesn’t hold a candle in opulence to some of the neighboring churches on
Most of us who have spent any time in a city have come across at least one of these before, even if it didn’t necessarily stand out. It’s a building (or cluster of
By this point, they’ve become almost as multifaceted as the dog breeds themselves. Much like murals, bike lanes, and decorative sidewalk benches, the dog park has become a fundamental amenity in urban settings…and
In the immediate years following the housing market’s catastrophic implosion, it was common to find half-finished suburban developments, where a handful of homes splayed out across a tangle of curvilinear streets. In most