Thinking Big by Thinking Small
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Thinking Big by Thinking Small

How to Make Places Go

Why the Five-Over-One Feels Dead
The most common new buildings in America score well on every planning metric we have. Except the ones we feel.
 • Jeffery Tompkins
What Makes a Place Go?
Something separates the streets that hum from the streets that don't. I've spent my years trying to name it.
 • Jeffery Tompkins
Rigid Zoning is a Bottleneck on Indiana's Competitiveness.
Indi­ana has spent dec­ades per­fect­ing a 20th-cen­tury eco­nomic play­book: keep taxes low, reg­u­la­tions light and the cost of doing busi­ness…
 • Jeffery Tompkins
Double Up the Lot: Turning Backyards into Bank Accounts
We should start saying "yes in my backyard" quite literally. The result could be generational wealth-creation for long-term residents.
 • Jeffery Tompkins
I Want My MTV (Mall to Village): A 6-Step Guide to Retrofitting Suburbia
Stop, collaborate, and listen. It’s time to turn dead retail boxes into living neighborhoods. Just not all of them.
 • Jeffery Tompkins
Don't Eliminate Single-Family Housing, Expand its Definition
Family-oriented housing is the real path forward.
 • Jeffery Tompkins
Why Your City Should Build a Retail Strategy
(And How They Can Do It) - aka thinking outside the Big Box
 • Jeffery Tompkins
Your Garage Might Be the Most Underrated Room in the City
How once car-first spaces can become the new urban frontier
 • Jeffery Tompkins
Porches as Social Infrastructure
How 6–10 feet of space can change how neighbors live together.
 • Jeffery Tompkins
The Unflat City: Rethinking Urban Theory for the Fourth Dimension
For more than a century, planners have drawn cities as maps: flat, fixed, and timeless. But cities don’t sit still. They move, adapt, and evolve through…
 • Jeffery Tompkins
What is Four-Dimensional Planning? Pt. 2
This is part two of an ongoing series on my theory of four-dimensional thinking around cities - you can read part 1 here.
 • Jeffery Tompkins
Pt. 1: What is Four-Dimensional Planning?
Thoughts on emergent theory and why it might (and should?) apply to city planning
 • Jeffery Tompkins
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