There is, of course, part of me that admires what King Charles III has been trying to do in Poundbury (a small master-planned community on the outskirts of Dorchester, England). It is a community that has deliberately rejected the modern suburban in favor of traditional… Read More
The UK has something called the National Model Design Code. The purpose of this national code is to provide guidance to local authorities and communities on the production of policies that promote successful design. More specifically, it is intended to help people determine what “good… Read More
Chrysler announced last week that it will become an all-electric vehicle company by 2028. This is a pretty big deal and, as I understand it, a first for the legacy US automakers. At this point, it now feels difficult to argue that this shift isn’t… Read More
The Kowloon Walled City was once one of the most densely populated precincts in the world. And by some measures, it was. Prior to its demolition in 1993, the Walled City was believed to house some 50,000 people — mostly informally — and was known… Read More
A team of researchers at UCL recently surveyed 2,500 households across the UK to see how the design of their homes and neighborhoods has impacted their experience during lockdown (May to June 2020). Perhaps most notably, the report, called Home Comforts, found that people living… Read More
In this January 2018 report from the Fraser Institute, they pegged the average population density of Paris to be about 21,067 inhabitants per square kilometer (2014 population year). It is the second densest city in their report after Hong Kong, but the densest in Europe.… Read More
Johnathon Little (husband) and Zoe Little (wife) recently launched a new housing concept out of the UK called Koto, which is supposedly Finnish for “cozy at home.” (Before Koto, Johnathon worked for Snohetta in Oslo.) The goal of the company is to create beautiful, small, and prefabricated… Read More
A condo developer friend of mine once told me something along the lines of this: “Brandon, I have generally learned over the years that if I like something, it probably means the general public [our purchasers] isn’t going to like it. And that’s because if… Read More
Summer time starts this weekend, at least in this part of the world. Africa and Asia generally don’t observe daylight savings time (DST), so if you just switched your clocks forward an hour, know that you are in the global minority. The whole point of… Read More
I have been very vocal on this blog about the importance “nighttime economies” for cities and for its creative industries. So I continue to be encouraged by all of the attention that this topic is getting over the last year or so. Recently, the Creative… Read More
BRANDON DONNELLY 