Posts Tagged ‘walkable’

Serenbe – Experiencing Urbanism at a Micro Scale

This is Selborne Village, in the Serenbe Development located near Palmetto Georgia. Serenbe is a conservation development, where a very large parcel of land (400+ acres) was largely preserved in its natural state through the development of tiny villages which take up only a small portion of the site. Clustering the development in this way allows for some interesting things to happen, which I think you can see pretty well in the video below.

Smart Code

Continuing in our look at the basics of Urbanism, I’d like to introduce another concept today: the SmartCode. SmartCode is a highly refined, form-based model development code. It was produced by Duany Plater-Zyberk during the 80′s and 90′s, and released to the general public in 2003. The entire code and a lot of supporting material [...]

Property Value Theory, Part 3: Places that Attract People

My Property Value Theory In urban settings the root value of all property is its attractiveness to human use, which I call “people-productivity“. This is different from resource-productivity, which is the basis for rural land values. There are two major things that attract people in a macro level: natural conditions (good weather, beautiful scenery, etc) [...]

Will and Won’t

Stemming from the last Houston Reimagined post: “West Gray Streetcar,” there has been a lot of discussion about walking in Houston. I thought I’d add a few of my thoughts on the subject along with a few photos from a trip that I walked today. Today my wife and I went to the Houston Zoo. [...]

Kirby Can Be Saved

Recently, Trees for Houston has been battling with the Upper Kirby TIRZ over widening Kirby drive. The argument tends to go something like this: TIRZ: “The lanes are too narrow, there’s all this development happening over here, and we’ve got to improve traffic flow.” TFH: “The trees are about the only thing making Kirby bearable [...]