Urban Design

What’s Missing In Cities’ Climate Resilience Interventions?

May 10, 2026 Aysha Khan, Next City. Create! Biodiversity, climate crisis, Green Transition, Urban Design, Water

Cities are under growing pressure to green their infrastructure, manage stormwater, and reverse ecological decline, all at once. Three studies published in recent weeks offer useful, if sometimes sobering, evidence on where progress is being made and where the gaps remain. The research spans three distinct interventions — household-level stormwater management in coastal cities, the ecological performance of urban green alleys, and the role of urban planners in freshwater conservation — but all conclude by pointing to a consistent theme.

Reversing Downtown Decline In A Small South Dakota Town

May 6, 2026 Bart Pfankuch, Next City. Create! Local Economy, Small Businesses, South Dakota, Urban Design

This small eastern South Dakota town is well known for its deep agricultural roots, its popular Fourth of July celebration and its regionally famous bakery specializing in bi-colored “zebra donuts.” But now, Centerville has a new claim to fame: The town of about 900 people located 40 miles southwest of Sioux Falls has become known as a statewide leader in downtown redevelopment. The successful effort to buck the trend of declining Main Street districts in small South Dakota towns has been fueled in part by a progressive approach to development by local leaders and a sense of entrepreneurship by local business owners.

Boston Has A Plan For Sea Level Rise; What Next?

May 5, 2026 Courtney Humphries, Next City. Strategize! Adaptation, Boston, climate crisis, Sea level rise, Urban Design

If you’ve flown into Boston’s airport or explored its downtown, chances are you’ve stood on land that was once underwater in the city’s history and that is projected to be flooded in the future. The city has more made land than any other in North America: It added 5,250 acres of new land throughout its history, amounting to one-sixth of its current land area. Boston boldly refashioned its own geography by creating low-lying land, but in doing so has left some of the city’s most economically important neighborhoods and infrastructure vulnerable to flooding with sea level rise.

Tech Giants Don’t Just Want Your Data; They Want Your City

April 26, 2026 Ali Fard, Next City. Educate! Big Tech, colonization, Data Centers, Urban Design

The fall of 2017 was a watershed moment in the evolving relationship between urbanism and technology corporations. In September, Amazon announced a request for proposals for cities to bid to host its new North American headquarters, Amazon HQ2. In October, a new partnership was announced between Sidewalk Labs — an Alphabet/Google subsidiary — and Waterfront Toronto — a public organization charged with the administration of the redevelopment and revitalization of Toronto’s postindustrial waterfront — to develop an “innovation and development plan” for Quayside, a 12-acre site on the city’s waterfront. The partnership was called “Sidewalk Toronto.”

Solidarity Economies And The Unmaking Of Racial Capitalism

February 6, 2026 Manifold.UMN.edu. Create! Capitalism, Gentrification, Racism, Solidarity Economy, Urban Design

Two large, painted signs sit at the entrance to the César Andreu Iglesias Community Garden, a large community garden roughly the size of a city block located in North Philadelphia. “WELCOME. BIENVENIDOS. GROW SHARE GATHER,” reads the first in lavender and green. Beside it, in yellow and red, a second sign declares, “ESTE TERRENO NO ESTA EN VENTA” (this land is not for sale). A raised fist—the universal symbol of solidarity—is painted beneath the text. Together, the two signs convey complementary messages about the garden.

How Stockholm Is Sprouting Healthy Trees From Concrete

January 20, 2026 Peter Yeung, Next City. Create! climate crisis, Environment, Sweden, Trees, Urban Design

When Stockholm’s Traffic Office conducted a general assessment of street traffic in the Swedish capital in 2001, it came to the shocking conclusion that two-thirds of all trees in the city center were dead or dying. City authorities agreed that an urgent response was needed to nurse these leafy urban ecosystem pillars back to health. Enter Björn Embrén, Stockholm’s first “tree officer.” Under his leadership, various technologies and materials were tested in an attempt to create a more suitable living space for trees in the urban environment.

Urban Gardens Can Bolster American Democracy

January 14, 2026 Sam Delgado, Civil Eats. Create! Food and Agriculture, Food Security, Urban Design, Urban Gardens

When people walk or drive past urban gardens, they often just see what’s on the surface. Raised beds on a small plot. Seedlings poking through the dirt. Perhaps bright pops of colorful produce, like tomatoes or peppers. But when Kate Brown, an environmental historian at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), looks at urban gardens, she sees a deep-rooted history of activism and sustainability—one that spans centuries, continents, and communities. Brown distilled her research on the subject into her forthcoming book, Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City.

Refugees Are Developing A First-Of-Its-Kind Community Land Trust

January 5, 2026 Roberto Camacho, Next City. Create! Community development, Refugees, San Diego, Urban Design

When Ramla Sahid was five years old, she and her family fled Somalia to escape the civil war that had engulfed the nation. Nearly 35 years later, living in San Diego as a refugee, she’s working to create what might be the country’s first community land trust for immigrant and refugee families. In 2015, Sahid founded the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA), a nonprofit staffed by refugees and working toward building economic, social and civic power for refugees and displaced communities around San Diego.

Building A National Movement To Protect Small Businesses From Displacement

December 8, 2025 Eliana Perozo, Next City. Organize! Displacement, Gentrification, Small Businesses, Urban Design

Willow Lung doesn’t come from a background in finance or business. She’s a scholar and professor focused on gentrification, social inequality and urban development. But five years ago, near the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, she founded the Small Business Anti- Displacement Network (SBAN) at the University of Maryland, a member-based national network dedicated to helping small businesses survive and thrive as their neighborhoods change. Since then, SBAN has amassed 180 members and counting. “We have a lot of attention paid to housing issues and gentrifying neighborhoods and affordable housing policies, but we don’t have an equitable amount of attention, resources and policymaking around issues of commercial gentrification,” says Lung.

Could Cities Partner With Guerilla Urbanists For Safer Streets?

November 24, 2025 Maylin Tu, Next City. Create! California, Los Angeles, Pedestrians, Public safety, tactical urbanism, Urban Design

Painting a crosswalk is cheap and easy. A group of neighbors can paint an entire intersection in one morning for $100 or less. Getting the city of Los Angeles to paint a crosswalk, on the other hand, might take 14 years and the death of a 9-year-old boy. Across L.A., neighbors are banding together to paint crosswalks to protest the city’s failure to protect people outside of cars. Jonathan Hale, a UCLA law student who goes by “Jonny,” spent four Saturday mornings painting crosswalks with neighbors at Stoner Park this summer, covering each corner of the park. After the city removed them, he went to the press and vowed to repaint them.

Zoning For The Future In Northwest Arkansas

November 15, 2025 Jordan P. Hickey, In these Times. Resist! Affordable Housing, Arkansas, Hyper-Gentrification, Urban Design, zoning

If this were the first city council meeting someone attended in Fayetteville, the construction proposal for The Hub would likely seem like a good prospect: seven stories of sleek new housing, in a city with desperate need for more of it, with 37 of its 312 apartments reserved as income-controlled “workforce units.” As the council members and a standing-room-only crowd listened on August 5, the representative from Chicago- based housing developer Core Spaces presented a plan that seemed almost ideal for the Northwest Arkansas college town.

How Tactical Urbanists Make The Water Visible To The Fish

October 20, 2025 Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon, and Aaron Naparstek, Next City. Create! Car-Free Community, Parks, Urban Design, Urbanism

Tactical urbanism has the power to pierce the automotive bubble that so frequently surrounds politicians — sometimes in an almost literal sense, because so many elected officials are driven everywhere. It can force them to see that they can become catalysts for rapid change if they really want to. But the value of these tactics goes well beyond the safety (and frequent smiles) that these interventions provide for cyclists or pedestrians who pass by while they’re in place — or even the permanent infrastructure changes they might inspire.

How Cities Are Reimagining Shelter For People Who Are Homeless

October 6, 2025 Robert Davis, Next City. Create! Homeless, Shelters, Urban Design, Wellness

Shelters are one of the most contentious topics in the homeless services sector, but a new crop of models seeks to change that paradigm. Homeless shelters have long been criticized as a means of warehousing people who are homeless rather than providing them with a pathway to stable housing. Some unhoused folks have said they experienced violence, sexual abuse and other traumatizing experiences while in shelters. Some advocates have also chided the traditional shelter model for creating high-barrier, treatment-first programs that exclude more unhoused folks than they help. “Everybody who became unhoused experienced some kind of trauma, and then by the time they get to the shelter, they’ve experienced multiple additional traumas and mental illness challenges – all those kinds of things that happen when someone is homeless,” says Lena Miller.

Residents Built A $10,000 Bike Lane In Atlanta

September 28, 2025 Aysha Kahn, Next City. Create! Atlanta, Bikes, Transportation, Urban Design

In 2020, city planning and transportation officials in Atlanta launched a tactical urbanism program to enable neighborhood groups to lead and fund alternative street design and safety changes through low-cost, temporary interventions. “These projects are often used to advance longer-term goals related to street safety and the design of public spaces,” the city explains in its tactical urbanism guide. “Tactical urbanism is temporary in nature, using tactical materials while demonstrating the potential of long-term change.” The 20th project under this initiative was just completed: turning street parking on one side of Virgina Avenue NE into a pop-up, protected, two-way bike lane, connecting a local high school and elementary school.

The ‘Project Marvel’ Deal That San Antonians Deserve

September 11, 2025 Paola Aguirre Serrano, Next City. Strategize! Community Assemblies, San Antonio, Sports, Urban Design

In 2025, the familiar story of sports-and-entertainment megaprojects plays out once more. On one side are the skeptics, wary of whether millions in public funds truly benefit everyday San Antonians; on the other are the enthusiasts, captivated by glossy renderings and big promises. In September 2024, Project Marvel was covered by media for the first time — a new vision to return the Spurs to downtown, near the Alamodome, reshaping the area into a sprawling entertainment and mixed-use district. The city’s 2002-built Frost Bank Center, previously known as the AT&T (and SBC) Center, opened at a cost of approximately $175–190 million, financed via hotel and car-rental tax increases alongside a Spurs contribution of $28.5 million.

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