The coronavirus has exposed the ills of continued automobile-centric urban planning practices that adversely impact equity, health, and the climate. Those of us who are working from home, own an automobile, and can conveniently make grocery runs may overlook the fact that many in this country are not so lucky. Many households rely on public transit systems that are struggling to provide service, or they may bear high transportation costs that are exacerbated by a lack of access to the most critical of needs. There is no technological solution that will solve the systemic problems with our urban land use…

If you haven’t been following the Sweet Sixteen this year it’s probably because you thought basketball games were all cancelled due to the global pandemic. You’d be right about that, but you’d also be missing out on the fantastic educational opportunity afforded you by the architects, builders, designers, and tradesmen who submitted their wall sections for comparison in the #WallAssemblySweet16 competition on Instagram, and here on GBA. Beginning in April, our BS* + Beer discussion group in Kansas City hosted a tournament of sixteen wall assemblies in head-to-head competition for the sake of fun and education. On April 28th Christine…

There are lots of reasons for builders to love concrete. It is a strong, durable, and affordable building material with uses everywhere from the foundation to the finished surfaces. There’s also one big reason for green builders not to like it very much at all: concrete comes with a big carbon footprint. It’s easy to choose not to use concrete for a patio or countertop—for these details there are plenty of good alternatives—but more difficult to figure out how to get it out of the foundation of a home. One step some builders have taken is to eliminate it from…

Changes in land-use and zoning regulations are encouraging more multifamily housing and reducing urban sprawl, but the single-family home remains dominant in many markets. Photo courtesy of MyBiggestFan / CC BY 2.0 / Flickr. For decades land use regulation across the U.S. has emphasized single-family houses on large lots. This approach has priced many people out of the quintessential American dream: home ownership. It also has promoted suburban sprawl—a pattern of low-density, car-dependent development that has dominated growth at the edges of urban areas since the end of World War II. Now, however, Americans may be starting to question the…