The UT School of Architecture announced Wednesday that a group of UT students and faculty will be collaborating with their counterparts at the Chinese capital's Tsinghua University to design a system of urban green retreats, or "pocket parks," in central Beijing. ...

So much urban development is happening in Austin, we barely have time to hit the highlights. We'd love to offer more fulsome coverage, but we need help. If you are interested in writing urban development posts for Austinist.com, email urban(@)austinist.com (remove the parenthesis) with a few sample posts and some information about yourself and why you want to write for Austinist.com. Villa Muse Development: Villa Muse (shown right) is a proposed 681-acre mixed-used development......

In case you haven't gotten enough New Urbanism lately, Congress for the New Urbanism will be holding next year's CNU XVI right here in Austin. If you can't wait that long to hear about New Urbanism's applicability to Central Texas, Envision Central Texas is hosting the SmartCode Workshop from March 29- 31, 2007. Is $565 a little too much scratch to hear about urban planning? Don't want to go all out on the whole......

Austin is trying to grow up. To become more cosmopolitan. To be a city with a 24-hour downtown area where people can walk to work and the grocery store and restaurants. But at what cost? And who, exactly, will live there? We’ve lived in urban areas from San Francisco to Chicago to New York, and we love the ability to use public transportation or our own two feet to get from pharmacy to bar......