Subscribe
Sign in
Home
Notes
Work
Partners
Archive
Leaderboard
About
Latest
Top
Discussions
From the Mushroom Kingdom to Haussmannian Paris
Theme parks, simulated cities, and the American longing for urban life
Sep 2
•
Alicia Pederson
24
8
3
August 2026
How to Build a Fine-Grained City: Party Walls, Point Access, and the Granular Block
Recovering the Institutional Capacity for Fine-Grained Urbanism
Aug 24
•
Alicia Pederson
33
1
Today, Chicago makes 49 luxury townhouses easier to build than a fine-grained neighborhood of 260 homes.
Developers build what the city makes legal and practical. We won’t have the dense, walkable neighborhoods that everyone wants until we change the laws.
Aug 22
•
Alicia Pederson
19
3
3
A Mixed-Use Courtyard Vision for Western and Lawrence
How an underused bank property could become hundreds of homes, new commercial space, a civic plaza, and a shared neighborhood garden
Aug 14
•
Alicia Pederson
16
1
The Courtyard Block Enters American Housing Policy: July 2026 Market Brief
Federal recognition; reforms in California, North Carolina, New Hampshire, & Connecticut; and much more
Aug 12
•
Alicia Pederson
14
2
Setting the Table for Courtyard Urbanism
What a two-day Strong Towns charrette in Bloomington-Normal taught me about turning downtown repair into an implementation program
Aug 5
•
Alicia Pederson
23
3
3
July 2026
The Family-Sized Blind Spot in Inclusionary Zoning
For buildings containing 25 homes or fewer, cities should allow family-sized units to replace otherwise required affordable units.
Jul 27
•
Alicia Pederson
19
1
3
The ROAD to Housing Act Creates a Federal Pathway for Courtyard Urbanism
Point-access buildings, preapproved courtyard templates, zoning reform, public land, and implementation funding can now be assembled into a new…
Jul 11
•
Alicia Pederson
57
5
5
June Courtyard Urbanist Market Brief
Turning Housing Reform into Buildable Urban Form
Jul 3
•
Alicia Pederson
13
June 2026
Keep Families in the City: Building Neighborhoods for Lifelong Chicagoans
Get your ticket today for this important event on Sunday, August 16, where we start organizing to remove the regulatory barriers to better family…
Jun 30
•
Alicia Pederson
9
Courtyard Urbanism: Ordering the Intensity of the City
How courtyard blocks help cities capture the benefits of density while containing the harms
Jun 29
•
Alicia Pederson
36
16
6
How Amsterdam is reviving the fine-grained courtyard block
The Dutch are making artificial islands off Amsterdam and using them to build new courtyard-block neighborhoods using a subdivision and passport system.
Jun 8
•
Alicia Pederson
41
6
10
This site requires JavaScript to run correctly. Please
turn on JavaScript
or unblock scripts
