Obituary

Doug Boone, a pioneering new urban developer in the Charlotte, North Carolina, region, died August 2. Boone injected urbanism in a suburban town and opened up the planning process to the public with his New Neighborhood project in the town of Davidson, north of Charlotte. Instead of hiring a planning or engineering firm to design a pod of single-family houses and submit that plan, the usual approach at the time, Boone held a design charrette in the town hall in 1997. The design by Dover, Kohl & Partners integrated a distinctive church, live-work units, townhouses, single-family houses, and public spaces. The project eventually acquired the name "St. Alban's neighborhood," after the church. Like many early new urban developers, Boone faced significant public opposition and regulatory hurdles. But the neighborhood was built, much as designed, and has become a beloved section of the town, according to the Davidson News. More on this project and Boone from Dover, Kohl.

Kenneth Groves, whose nine years as director of planning and development in Montgomery, Alabama, resulted in an overhaul of the city’s zoning and more urbane development downtown, died Sept. 28 after a brief struggle with cancer.

Paul Crawford, a nationally known expert on form-based codes and a practitioner admired among new urbanists, died of a brain tumor May 21 at his home in San Luis Obispo, California. He was 60.

Richard McLaughlin, a Minneapolis-based architect and town planner known for his work on public-sector charrettes and for his efforts to systematize New Urbanism, died on New Year’s Eve of pancreatic cancer. He was a former principal of the Town Planning Collaborative in Minneapolis, and worked with John Anderson and Jason Miller on the first Traditional Neighborhood Development house plan book, the TND Series published by HomeStyles beginning in 1997.