Now this is a true piazza in design and proportion, just the right scale, surrounded by restaurants and entertainment, always full of people, and even located in the U.S.  Unfortunately, the second and third floors are not offices and apartments and it’s a tourist attraction in a Las Vegas resort on the Strip.

The point here is not to rip on all the things Las Vegas does wrong, but to learn from what happens when the top designers in the world focus on building places that compel people to

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His name is Kiki Wallace, and he’s the founder of a striking new town called Prospect located outside Boulder, Colorado, as introduced in yesterday’s blog.

I’ve known him for a few years since the town first broke down - he was one of the first to get his hands on the VW New Beetle when it came out, and he could never attend a conference because he didn’t have the patience to sit and watch speakers who talked about what he was already doing.  Well, he couldn’t really sit still regardless. 

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The irony is that of the hundreds of new pedestrian-oriented towns being built, hardly any of them look remotely, well, new.  Most of them reflect the traditional styles of 1920s architecture, which is fine in the sense that much of that era produced some of the most beautiful towns in the country, but not so fine in perpetuating the myth that we can’t produce even more beautiful towns with modern design and materials?

I experienced what is perhaps a sign of things to come last week when I

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Boulder’s downtown pedestrian street (Pearl Street) is one of only a few in the U.S. that survived the regional enclosed mall phase that began in the 1960s and now ending.  What’s their secret?

Pearl Street’s shops and restaurants account for only 30% of its square footage, all on the ground floor. A whopping 52% is devoted to private offices, mainly on the second and third floors, while the rest (18%) is government offices and other civic uses as churches, the bus depot, and police station. 

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As they say, “If San Francisco had a French quarter, Belden Place would be it.“  It’s an intimate, human-scaled alley lined with cafes, tucked away between Bush and Pine, Kearny and Montgomery streets in the Financial District.  The entire pedestrian-only street (paseo) is one elongated dining room, and a larger version of the ones in Sienna, Spain.

While they do celebrate Bastille Day in the alley, the day-day culinary experience is anything but exclusively French.  On any given day, one can

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The answer?  When you focus on designing great alleys.

Narrow, pedestrian-only streets (paseos) are becoming quite popular.  They help focus attention on people, the most interesting subject matter to the human eye.  This ‘people stage’ is made more dramatic with a terminating building(s).

Building facades that feature human-scaled, human-designed detailing are that much more appealing to - humans, especially if you intend to look at it longer than a minute or two.  The same goes for the

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The MINI Cooper is one of the biggest automotive success stories in the last few years.  BMW announces a 1-Series to come to the U.S.  Volvo plans an even smaller car than the smallest car they’ve introduced in a decade.  Mercedes is even planning a new brand called Smart, where two Smart cars can fit in one parking space.  Honda, Ford are following suit.  Chevy already has the Aveo.

What’s going on here?  While a lot of it has to do with rising gas prices, Americans aren’t buying these cars

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You get places like this.  The scene seems so natural, but it’s actually very unnatural here in the U.S. (the shot is in Paris).

First of all, there’d be a line of cars parked alongside the curb, which would immediately block any view more than 10’ in front of you.  This is one reason why waterfront seating seems so dramatic by comparison.  The buildings on the opposite side of the street would be pushed back and largely out of the picture, mainly because the street here won’t accomodate four

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In addition to the new and exciting restaurants and shops (eg the CakeLoves) that can spark a downtown revival, you need the neighborhood institutions, the ones that withstood the riots, the mass exodus to the burbs, urban renewal and the relentless unpredictability of keeping a restaurant open.  Why?  Because it not only provides a sense of history and place, but a sense of security that the same people have been in the same place for so long.

Easier said than done, but Ben’s Chili Bowl,

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