Democracy needs neighborhoods where diverse people mingle.

The happiness we pursue is more enduring and rewarding than the transient emotional lift of the sublime's novelty and drama. It resides instead in the beauty in the buildings we build and the urbanism we make with tradition’s guidance.

Carroll William Westfall discusses the development of preservation and urbanism, illustrating the problem with labeling a building "of its time."

Incremental change in architecture and urban development produces successful neighborhoods and cities.

Drawings by Eric Osth of Urban Design Associates show that great streets can serve as centers of urban life, creating character and regeneration.

Urbanism is what we build to serve our needs and desires in families and neighborhoods and on up in scale to cities, states and nations. It is the grandest, most complicated, complex, and extensive thing we build, but we underestimate its role in our lives, and it is tradition that makes urbanism valuable for us.

Adam sets out to answer this basic question: Why does contemporary world architecture look the way it does?

Clem Labine Award honors architect Milton Grenfell.

Insights from cognitive psychology and related fields are providing intriguing answers to that question.