This article from today’s NYT has got me all happy and excited. I’d previously heard of—and enthused about—Teddy Cruz’s project with Casa Familiar in San Ydisdro, which is, in my mind anyway, similar in concept if not in form to such projects as the Scandinavian-inspired Yulupa Cohousing development in my own town, and to a lesser extent the Fruitvale transit village in Oakland.

These types of projects deal with several areas that would be the focus of my work were I to get into the urban planning field:

• Densification of the US urban space, for the purpose of reduced energy usage. (Mantra: The current development pattern in the United States is harmful and unsustainable from the perspective of resource usage, and therefore needs to change.)
• Densification of the US urban space, for the (subjective) purpose of increased quality of life and greater community. My viewpoint may be naïve, but I’ll need to find that out in my own time.
• A personal love of the organic, hyper-mixed-use, always innovative and inventive urban spaces frequently seen throughout Latin America. Much like Mr. Cruz, I’d love to see such concepts adapted for use in the US.