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Alpha, New Jersey: The town the freeway DIDN’T destroy.

Stretching 144 miles from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to the Holland Tunnel just outside Manhattan, Interstate 78 is hardly among the longer limited-access highways in the country. And, while certainly busy, I’d imagine plenty other freeways out there link a greater number of major population centers than I-78. Elsewhere in New Jersey, the Turnpike unquestionably carries a

Undone by the dome.

Strolling through the town of Bowman, North Dakota last summer (which is how one gets around if one finds oneself in Bowman…obviously), I came across a pretty slick looking geodesic dome home. We see these from time to time. After all, they were quite the fad for a few years, peaking around 1970. While I

Mystic and the tourist main street: undermined by its own eclecticism?

Southeastern Connecticut boasts a flourishing, well-preserved hub of commercial activity, popular with tourists but hardly neglected by the locals. This hub is not New London, historically the largest city in the region, a former shipping center and home to the Coast Guard Academy. It also isn’t Norwich, a mill city up the Thames River that

MONTAGE: An abandoned building is bad enough. But what about an abandoned campus?

It’s been a long time since I’ve shared a mostly photo-driven blog article, and I can’t think of a richer array from recent years than that of Dana College, a private educational institution founded in Blair, Nebraska. Originally affiliated with the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Association (the denomination and nationality of the original pioneer founders), various

Small town urban infill: more than just replacing the baby teeth.

As much as we herald the reurbanization of our big cities—the “return to the downtowns”—it’s just as commendable when it takes place along the main streets of small towns. And it’s often just as difficult to get it right. While one might expect the redevelopment of a parcel in the downtown of a large metro

Boundary battles over sparklers and smokes?

We always look for the better deal first. It goes without saying. When two neighboring jurisdictions apply different regulations to a specific good or service for which great demand exists, the industry that financially depends on that good/service will gravitate toward the less stringent side of the boundary line. I’ve pointed this out before when

GUEST POST: Monuments of the City – Part I.

And now a first (at least for me): a guest blog post. Two posts, actually. Steve Polston has followed my blog tirelessly over the years, and, though we have only occasionally lived in Indianapolis at the same time, he has long been generous enough to share with me his insights on landscapes, both in writing

When your domain is compromised, how do you take the high road?

The impacts of government policies can be subtle, far-reaching and antithetical to their original good intentions. Identifying examples of this is part of my duty as a blogger. Sometimes, though, the evidence of a policy is right there in your face…called out by the person most affected.   This former home in Greenfield, Indiana (about 20 miles

Is it time to peel back our provisions for parking?

With few exceptions, any time a person living in a less urban area must patronize a business in a more urban area, a single question emerges… “What’s the parking situation like?” But this commonplace consideration masks an underlying predicament that’s a lot hairier: what is the perception of parking at the destination? And, as is

Biblical Flooding on a Biblical Floodplain, Part I – The recipe for natural disaster.

Whether wildfires, tornadoes, power plant meltdowns, explosions, epidemics, bankruptcies, school shootings, Godzilla invasions, or roving bands of undomesticated alpacas on the loose, the essential agreement for a disaster to capture the public eye is magnitude. This isn’t brain surgery. Size is generally the variable that semantically distinguishes disaster from catastrophe, or separates predicament from setback.

Alpha, New Jersey: The town the freeway DIDN’T destroy.

Stretching 144 miles from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to the Holland Tunnel just outside Manhattan, Interstate 78 is hardly among the longer limited-access highways in the country. And, while certainly busy, I’d imagine plenty other

Undone by the dome.

Strolling through the town of Bowman, North Dakota last summer (which is how one gets around if one finds oneself in Bowman…obviously), I came across a pretty slick looking geodesic dome home. We

Boundary battles over sparklers and smokes?

We always look for the better deal first. It goes without saying. When two neighboring jurisdictions apply different regulations to a specific good or service for which great demand exists, the industry that

GUEST POST: Monuments of the City – Part I.

And now a first (at least for me): a guest blog post. Two posts, actually. Steve Polston has followed my blog tirelessly over the years, and, though we have only occasionally lived in

Is it time to peel back our provisions for parking?

With few exceptions, any time a person living in a less urban area must patronize a business in a more urban area, a single question emerges… “What’s the parking situation like?” But this