Urban Policy

The Obama administration is reportedly considering backing a radical plan to shrink deteriorating American cities by bulldozing entire neighborhoods and returning the land to nature. The idea, which originated in Flint, Mich. -- cratered by the auto industry implosion -- is to persuade disintegrating and depopulated cities to embrace their shrinkage, destroy abandoned infrastructure, save money and thereby stave off fiscal ruin.

For more than two centuries, it has been a wannabe among the great world capitals. But now, Washington is finally ready for its close-up.

The Washington Post assembled a team of artists, architects, engineers and developers to think creatively about what to do with spaces once occupied by big box stores -- our most common, underrated and increasingly available major buildings. Below are some of their ideas.

As a developer, what Leinberger hates about parking lots is that they just sit there not making him any money. Fortunately, that… more

For the purposes of this morning's discussion, the amazing thing about the Spam Museum -- as in the meat product -- is not that it exists. It's that it was created out of an abandoned Kmart. "The renovation of the Kmart building into what you see here today has the drama of a great epic," says Julie Craven, publicity representative for Spam in Austin, Minn. "We are going to be in this building for a long, long time. . . . We love it here."

SHANGHAI -- "Most of them are so superbly ugly that they're exciting." That's what Qingyun Ma, dean of the architecture school at USC, told me last Tuesday afternoon when I asked him what he thought of this city's remarkable explosion of skyscrapers. We were in a taxi heading east on the elevated Yan'an Highway, in the heart of the city, continuing a conversation we had started an hour earlier in a conference room at the architecture firm he runs here in the French… more

Sometimes I miss Los Angeles. I live and work smack in the middle of it. But sometimes I still miss it.

I figure I can place the origins of my nostalgia in the year I spent in Madrid, when I was 14. That was when I made Joni Mitchell's Vietnam War-era paean to my home state my personal anthem. Although I can't say I was homesick for family and friends, I sure identified with Mitchell's longing for warmth and refuge in… more

Half of the world’s population now lives in cities, a number that will climb to 75% by the middle of the century. This development marks a radical break in human history, for humanity has until recently been overwhelmingly rural, concerned first and foremost with brute survival.

In “The Communist Manifesto,” Karl Marx referred to “the idiocy of rural life” -- or so the mistranslation goes -- as an enduring problem. In fact, Marx wasn’t talking about “idiocy” at all. Rather, he… more

I don't know about you, but I'm proud of the fact that the most celebrated symbol of our city isn't a statue that was a gift from the French. I also think it's fitting that it isn't burdened with heavy ideology, profound symbolism or deep meaning. Nobody ever accused the Hollywood sign of inspiring high-minded musings about the essence of our city, let alone the exalted mission of our nation. If anything, it evokes a sordid lust for fame and… more

It’s all the suburbs’ fault. You know, everything -- traffic congestion, overweight kids, social alienation. Oh, and lest we forget, global warming and rising energy costs, too.

That latest knock against the burbs has caught on widely. With their multiplying McMansions and exploding Explorers, the burbs are the reason we’re paying so much for gas and heating oil and spewing all those emissions that are heating up the atmosphere --or so a host of urban proponents tells us. It’s time to… more