big ideas

In Western cities, we waste significant resources developing complex strategies for large-scale projects or macro-grain zoning patterns, while neglecting the opportunity to reform parcels or codes to allow for smaller, emergent uses on a meso and micro scale that would enable incremental, affordable development appropriate given market and rents. Given the contemporary paradigm of granularity, our built environments are increasingly macro-scale and expensive, stifling the kind of organic growth that leads to adaptable cities over time. These are serious issues that encourage trends like displacement as part of gentrification, encourage monolithic development patterns, and disallow community gardens due to code violations, for example. Instead, our regulatory environment discourages rather than encourage hyperlocal, community development. My work intersects with how to eschew this pattern in lieu of empowering individuals and communities to co-create communities with the tools of “good” urbanism.

“How do we let places go again?”, then, is a key question of my work.