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Design Mobility Neighborliness Regulation Suburbia Transit

Designing for Resilience: Policies Are Great, but Design Is What Will Change Your Life

I recently married my boyfriend Rob and moved ten minutes from my home in Sanger Heights into a garage flat belonging to a couple from our church. Rob had been living here for a few months already and as we headed home from our honeymoon in Santa Fe, I began thinking about what our new […]

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Design Neighborliness

Social Infrastructure: The Real Investment Our Cities Need

My first summer of living in Waco, Texas, I sat up late one night journaling. It had been about 10 months since leaving Brooklyn. What did I miss, exactly, I wondered to myself as I leaned my head back against my pillow. A few predictable answers filled my mind: public transit, bodegas guarded by one-eyed […]

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Design Neighborliness

In Hospitable Cities, You’re Welcomed by Design

A few weeks ago, my boyfriend Rob and I were driving back after a long hike in Waco’s beautiful Cameron Park when we spotted a locally owned baked-goods truck a few blocks from my house. After living in this neighborhood for almost a year, I decided it was time to try their gluten-free bacon jalapeno […]

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Design Neighborliness

The Importance of Proximity in Community

This essay originally appeared in Verily Magazine in October, 2021 Roughly a year ago (13 months to be exact), I found myself sitting in the passenger’s seat of a friend’s car, clutching a baby fiddle leaf fig tree I had bought from Trader Joe’s in Austin two hours earlier. I was fresh off a plane […]