This blog has so far focused a fair bit on what is wrong with the built form of Traverse City and noted areas of improvement, as opposed to areas that are already great. This is not to say that we don’t realize this city has great places, or that we don’t see progress being made. [...]

It should be clear by now to all involved that the city as a truly urban and highly utilized form is the orientation of the future. With the convergence of environmental concerns and changing lifestyle preferences, more active and involved residential and commercial districts promise to out-perform disconnected suburban locations in the foreseeable future and [...]

The creation of new housing desirable to young people requires more thought than simply creating four walls and a roof. While it must be affordable, it also must be cool, one without the other is a recipe for disaster for both the city and the young people who might choose to live there. The next [...]

Traverse City lacks sufficient housing affordable to young people and new families looking to move to, or stay in the area. Providing housing that gives people the option of owning one fewer car, or purchasing a gallon of milk down the street helps to provide more affordable total costs of living, increases personal health and [...]

In Traverse City, parking is being provided in a variety of ways; public on-street, public structured, public surface, and private surface parking lots. While the city’s parking plan is progressive and is envisioned as a being better in the future, current realities necessitate an honest appraisal of the parking system as it exists today. Strong [...]

In Traverse City, most alleys operate as public right-of-ways offering priority to mail trucks, beer deliveries, and providing limited parking for VIPs.  With densification in mind, the deep block between Front St. and State St. boasts the potential for new tenant space, and begs the question of whether more building owners should consider fronting the [...]

Downtown Traverse City’s mote, the Boardman river, undeveloped and underutilized, acts as a boundary in which zones of pedestrian activity cross but rarely engage.  We envision a reprogramming of its adjacencies, the majority being surfing parking lots, to allow for topographical changes of the river’s edge.  Such manipulations to the existing space, creating amphitheaters, patios, [...]