We highlight here some great articles we’ve read this week dealing with art, creative placemaking, and building great communities. You’re sure to find some inspiration to make your life and our community even better!

1. How Walking, Biking, and Mass Transit Move Us Toward a Brighter Future: Transportation accounts for 25 percent of household costs in “Auto Dependent Exurbs”, compared to 9 percent in walkable communities with good transit connections.

2.  A Renovated Movie Theater in Farmington Hills: The programming at the nine-screen Riviera will focus on mainstream films, and the theater will feature partial stadium seating, reclining chairs and a full bar and cocktail lounge.

3. Does Your Town Have “Good Bones”?: When people who study cities and towns say that a place “has good bones,” they mean that it has a connected network of small blocks and “lean” (not overly wide) streets. The blocks probably hold at least a few fine old buildings … Urban renewal and parking policies led to the loss of many buildings.

4. The Shopping Mall Death Spiral: Cities that tethered their future to this experiment are going to struggle while those that still have a pulse in their core neighborhoods will have a chance at renewed prosperity.

5. Too Many Parking Spots?: When we say we can’t find anywhere to park, what we usually mean is we can’t find a free or insanely cheap parking spot within spitting distance of our destination.