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American citizens and communities should be free to choose where they would like to live and not be subject to federal neighborhood engineering at the behest of an overreaching federal government.

Just as playgrounds didn't even make the priority list of most of those responding to Katrina, they all too often slip off the radar of those building our schools, designing our neighborhoods, and drafting government budgets.

If there really is no new way to be found, we are not afraid to stick with the old one that we found previously. So, I do not make every building different.

If you think about making a city that is much more porous, many accessible spaces, that is a political position, because you don't fortify, you open it up so that many people can use it.

Why can't we, with a more intelligent policy, actually have houses that are affordable, built at higher densities than they are at the moment and built on brownfield sites.

There are tremendous barriers to building housing. If we could break them down, the need for rent controls would go away.

There are no problems that exist in the District that have been solved elsewhere in the country. Whatever problems exist in this city exist other places.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to the challenges facing our cities or to the housing crisis, but the two issues need to be considered together. From an urban design and planning point of view, the well-connected open city is a powerful paradigm and an engine for integration and inclusivity.

What most Americans don't realize is a lot of the challenges we're struggling with today are the result of conscious housing policies.

Communities need to feel that they can accommodate people. Rather than feeling that it's not possible to integrate and that the stress and strain on housing and public services is too great.