(press.) New York Times contributing columnist Allison Arieff, who is also the Editorial Director at SPUR in San Francisco, penned this Op-Ed in early 2015, “What Happened to the Great Urban Design Projects?” In it, she makes a case for awe in the design of infrastructure, summoning icons like the Golden Gate Bridge and innovators like Elon Musk. Arieff also gives a shout-out to the Atlanta Beltline and my book, Where We Want to Live.

Excerpt: “Yet engineers, planners and policy makers tend to focus on wonky stuff like percentage of parkland per person. They’re awash in acronyms like V.M.T. (vehicle miles traveled), too reliant on planning terms like modeshare that don’t resonate with the general public. These things may be useful in measuring the metrics of a city, but they sure don’t get to the reasons people want to live there. You don’t move to one city because it has 35 percent more parkland per person than another city. You move there because you fall in love with it, or with someone there, or you get a job there, or your family is from there. We need to address metrics, but the bigger goal is to make cities that we love.”  >> More.