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This article was originally published on Common Edge. My mother is a psychologist, so our family talks a lot about emotion. More specifically, we discuss the experience of emotion, because, as she  likes to remind me and my sisters, “We don’t  think our feelings—we  feel them, in our bodies.” According to my mother, it’s this experience of emotion that gives our lives a sense of meaning and vitality; as a result, her work isn’t about intellectual insight or abstract theories, but rather about giving her patients a new experience of themselves in the world. The field of archi...

This term, artificial complexity, has not been widely used in the context of architecture. However, the architect and urbanist Leon Krier has frequently illustrated the phenomenon permeating the design of buildings, landscapes, and cities. His diagrams expose the absurdity of so much contrived complexity vs. the rational form of Krier’s classically inspired architecture and urbanism. Mathematician Nikos Salingaros has written extensively about complexity in architecture, using the terms disorganized, random, and invented complexity. And Christopher Alexander spent a lifetime trying to te...

This article was originally published on Common Edge. From the hills behind the City Hall in my adopted hometown of Ventura, California, it’s less than 1,000 yards southward to the Pacific Ocean. This constrained piece of topography creates a small urban gem of a downtown: streetscapes, restaurants, stores, offices, residences, parking garages, and a beachfront promenade, all within eight or so square blocks, creating a lively streetlife that connects a historic downtown to the beach. But this narrow slot is also a critical part of California’s coastal transportation corridor. Laced thro...

Reimagining the Urban Freeway With the new administration placing racial justice and equity at the forefront of transportation policy, will America finally reckon with the legacy of its freeways? February 11, 2021, 7am PST | Diana Ionescu | In a piece for Common Edge, William Fulton describes a scene that's all too common in many American cities: a dense, walkable downtown, brimming with diverse uses and businesses, sliced through by a massive freeway overpass. "In almost every urban location I have ever lived, a midcentury transportation scar stretches across the landscape and makes nav...

This article was originally published on Common Edge In a Common Edge article, I briefly discussed a concept that I call the “Triple Bottom Lie,” which posits that more people, plus more consumption by each person, plus an economic system completely dependent on the aforementioned items, can just keep working forever, without consequences. Historically, the United States has accepted the economic shibboleth of endless growth because it reduced class conflict; a rising tide (supposedly) lifted all boats, rafts and yachts included. We are, however, approaching the limits of growth, from bo...