It’s a bit weird to feature an article that hasn’t yet fully materialized, but I want to get the word out because it may be months before we see the finished product…and the concept is pretty great. I recently received a commission to revive the subject of an old blog topic for The Digital Encyclopedia
Even as virtually every sub-category within retail is straining under the escalating popularity of online shopping, one typology has proven unexpectedly hot, and it shows no real signs of relenting: the food hall. Perhaps because I’m a hayseed, I didn’t really have a mental image for the term until about a year ago, when I
In this era of widespread downtown redevelopment, it’s easy to find before/after scenarios that effectively demonstrate how Floor Area Ratio (FAR) works to capitalize on an increasingly valuable piece of urban land. Typically, all one has to do is compare a photo of a forlorn part of a big city’s downtown in 1995 and compare
Ever since it opened in late 2017, Washington DC’s mixed-use waterfront development known as The District Wharf (“The Wharf”) has become a premier attraction for locals and visitors who are in the know. Unlike so many riverfront investments in recent years, it doesn’t look like a single developer conceived it, even though it owes most
By now, anyone who lives in a reasonably healthy city has seen evidence of a developer who improves an old piece of real estate (and often the existing building itself) by building upward. If a property is small and the neighbors hem it in, the natural way to grow is up. And we’re setting a
Multiple times in the past I’ve compared building design to clothing styles, and while such an analogy may gall both architects and fashion designers, I’m going to hold my ground on this one. The two professions clearly fall within the discipline of design, and, as such, they rely heavily on the transitory nature of prevailing
In an era of progressive retail collapse, one submarket that seems to be flourishing is the coffee shop. Although the restaurant scene has surged in the wake of a conspicuous decline in recreational shopping, the pundits have also anticipated that we are at “peak restaurant” and that a restaurant bubble-burst is imminent. But is that
My latest came out just in time for Black Friday, on Manhattan Institute’s City Journal: a world without malls. It’s my most recent rumination on the bleak future of retail in 2018–an industry that looks increasingly likely experience a collapse with no other precedent than era when the suburban shopping mall replaced the American town center as the place
For those who still need evidence of the Brutalist architectural movement’s effrontery—if my recent article on the two ungainly banks in Asheville wasn’t enough—I offer this leviathan in Worcester, Massachusetts.The barely visible logo in the building’s spire to the left—just behind that stoplight—suggests that this is an AT&T property. Regardless of who owns it (and
The transformation of Washington DC’s Navy Yard over the last fifteen years has been astonishing, and though I cannot account for it from firsthand experience, I don’t need to: a quick trip using the archive tool with Google Street View will show how much development has taken place since 2007, when Google first introduced the
It’s a bit weird to feature an article that hasn’t yet fully materialized, but I want to get the word out because it may be months before we see the finished product…and the
Even as virtually every sub-category within retail is straining under the escalating popularity of online shopping, one typology has proven unexpectedly hot, and it shows no real signs of relenting: the food hall.
In this era of widespread downtown redevelopment, it’s easy to find before/after scenarios that effectively demonstrate how Floor Area Ratio (FAR) works to capitalize on an increasingly valuable piece of urban land. Typically,
Ever since it opened in late 2017, Washington DC’s mixed-use waterfront development known as The District Wharf (“The Wharf”) has become a premier attraction for locals and visitors who are in the know.
By now, anyone who lives in a reasonably healthy city has seen evidence of a developer who improves an old piece of real estate (and often the existing building itself) by building upward.
Multiple times in the past I’ve compared building design to clothing styles, and while such an analogy may gall both architects and fashion designers, I’m going to hold my ground on this one.
In an era of progressive retail collapse, one submarket that seems to be flourishing is the coffee shop. Although the restaurant scene has surged in the wake of a conspicuous decline in recreational
My latest came out just in time for Black Friday, on Manhattan Institute’s City Journal: a world without malls. It’s my most recent rumination on the bleak future of retail in 2018–an industry that
For those who still need evidence of the Brutalist architectural movement’s effrontery—if my recent article on the two ungainly banks in Asheville wasn’t enough—I offer this leviathan in Worcester, Massachusetts.The barely visible logo
The transformation of Washington DC’s Navy Yard over the last fifteen years has been astonishing, and though I cannot account for it from firsthand experience, I don’t need to: a quick trip using