Four years ago, the quarter-mile-long stretch of land along the Fox River, about a block from downtown Green Bay, Wisconsin, was mostly a simple path and a large empty space behind a mall parking structure.

Dark and neglected 'that's the kind of derelict space that lurks below most highways and elevated roadways. Cities in the process of densifying, however, can no longer afford to ignore such concrete underbellies. Toronto, which has been busy completing 70,000 residential units between 2008 and 2012'mostly condominium apartments'recently opened Underpass Park, a gutsy template that repairs a previously marginalized urban zone in the city's East End neighborhood.

A different kind of FRAC Centre (Les Fonds R'gionaux d'Art Contemporain) opens September 14 in the historic city of Orl'ans, France'it is the first of the some two dozen regional cultural institutions to be devoted to architectural exhibitions as well as art.

In 2004, before the real estate crash, the city of Los Angeles and developer Related Companies had plans for downtown's Grand Avenue that were, well, grand. 

Sitting in Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates' (MVVA) Jacob K. Javits Federal Building Plaza in downtown Manhattan, at Worth and Lafayette streets, you could forget that a former iteration of the quiet plaza sparked one of the most outsized controversies about public sculpture and artists' control over the fate of their work.

As in many American cities, large highways slice through downtown Dallas. Sidewalks seem intermittent, parking lots abundant, and locals respond with strange looks when asked the best way to walk to a nearby bar or restaurant. But Dallas is pouring millions of dollars into changing all that.

Not every architect would compete to renovate a department-store facade situated between a supermarket and an Applebee's on a sign-saturated, multilane highway 6,000 miles from home.

An urban park adds a bustling social center to a newly redeveloped Washington, D.C., neighborhood.

If A carpaccio of octopus, tender and razor thin, with notes of mellow olive oil, tangy citrus, and smoky piment'n, could be translated into restaurant design, you might end up with the Workshop Kitchen + Bar in Palm Springs, California.

It's not easy being an ugly office building in New Jersey. Drive down any suburban stretch and these dinosaurs from the 1980s languish on the roadside, lonely reminders of a time when builders thought everyone would want to work in suburbia forever.