Here are som Berlin courtyard blocks for your timeline. The conversation here is so much better than on X. But the industry people and “people who need to hear it” are on X, as well as internationals.

Hi! I logged on here to find out what’s going on with elevator reform. Is Stephen Smith on here?

Edinburgh, Scotland, shows that when you stack apartments, join them wall-to-wall, and build them right up to the property line to form courtyard blocks ...

In a courtyard block, when your kids get the zoomies at a party, you send them outside to play with other kids in the courtyard.

Driving through Holland, MI, on way back to Chicago, I’m once again blown away that the American Dutch today living in greenfield subdivisions like this and shopping in big box commercial lagoons like this …

Failing to provide suitable housing for young families, cities are hemorrhaging children and alienating ordinary families from our urban centers of commerce, culture, and government. eig.org/families-exo...

In the 1970s, this Viennese courtyard block was condemned to demolition to make way for a major highway. However, residents fought to preserve the structure and won.

As @OldUrbanist pointed out in an old blog post, the tall and thin courtyard blocks of Berlin provide greater density AND more outdoor space and ventilation/natural light. oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2015/06/fall...

Now for Bluesky, the courtyard block argument: Modern cities have failed to provide housing for ordinary families. The solution is courtyard blocks, which are uniquely capable of providing residents with the “big house with a yard” but scaled for urban density and commercial integration.

CIMBY (Courtyard In My Backyard) aims to increase the abundance of mixed-use, midrise housing in urban neighborhoods. CIMBY has the specific goal of making cities more attractive to the families who leave cities in search of the “big house with a yard” in the suburbs.

Leaving the north side of Chicago for Thanksgiving road trip to west Michigan. This is my three hour window to move courtyard urbanism content to this space …