At the heart of the book are summaries of eight design workshops, or charrettes, each consisting of five days of brain-storming by competing teams of University of Washington students and faculty, design professionals, and community leaders, to propose solutions to regional problems. The Seattle charrettes apply design concepts to real problems such as housing, transportation, and suburban sprawl. Thousands of hours of creative effort, led by some of the nation's foremost designers, have produced a blueprint for one region that is pertinent to other regions in the country.

Kelbaugh looks at such concepts as the New Urbanism, Urban Villages, Pedestrian Pockets, and Transit-Oriented Development -- many of which he helped pioneer. He devotes chapters to the costs of sprawl, critical regionalism, architectural typology, and urban policy.Bridging academic theory and on-the-ground practice, Common Place is an indispensable book for designers, planners, city officials, developers, environmentalists, and citizens interested in understanding and shaping the American metropolis.

"This book is so powerful and so accessible that it will serve to inspire citizens to develop their own visions for their communities". -- Norman B. Rice, Mayor of Seattle and President of theU.S. Conference of Mayors

"Here, in accessible prose, the residents of Puget Sound are offered an opportunity to study and visualize future development alternatives and their consequences. As the inexorable pressures of growth and building expansion focus on the Pacific Northwest, it is the right book at the right time. -- "Donald Prowler, University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University

"Common Place represents precisely that mix of general principles and local knowledge which must form the basis of any intelligent urban practice. It is therefore exemplary, in the best and fullest sense of that term, and deserves a broad audience. "-- Alan J. Plattus, Yale University