Think of digital signage in an urban streetscape, and you probably picture something like Times Square or Las Vegas. The unique attractions of those places notwithstanding, few municipalities are looking to replicate that aesthetic. In most urban downtowns, big, bright signs with moving images have faced very tight restrictions, if not outright banishment.

But a different response has started to emerge over the years, and especially recently, in cities from Denver to Atlanta, San Antonio to San Jose. The evolution of digital signage technology, combined with some adventurous thinking and experimentation, has led to the development of “media districts” designed to breathe life into existing neighborhoods in urban downtowns and beyond.

Denver has been a notable pioneer. Two decades ago there was, by legislative design, no digital signage downtown. As an advertising medium, such signs were seen as little more than extra-garish billboards, benefitting only their outdoor-media company owners and private landlords. But at the same time, the city was trying to figure out how to bring more activity—and actual light—to downtown streets around its performing arts complex and convention center, an area that tended toward unwelcoming darkness after nightfall. It was tough for restaurants and other businesses to draw customers, and the area lacked “a sense of place,” says David Ehrlich, who is now the executive director of the Denver Theatre District, and back then was a consultant with sports and entertainment businesses on venue projects.

Asked to work with the city on ideas for enlivening the district, Ehrlich was inspired by an old photograph of the same area in the late 19^th century, lit up by then-newfangled light bulbs and dubbed “the brightest street in America” by Thomas Edison. “Literally in the picture you could see a bunch of people on the street,” Ehrlich says. “I thought, you know, let’s do a back-to-the-future thing. Let’s take modern media to serve that purpose of creating a sense of place, a sense of safety.”

Today there are 17 digital signs of varying size installed in a 16-square-block area (along with 29 static, non-digital billboard-style signs that have gone up since the city implemented new regulations). Participating media companies that own the signs distribute 15 percent of their revenue — which generally works out to more than $1 million a year — to the nonprofit, nongovernmental Denver Theatre District, which funds various events and arts projects in the area. Some of these projects take place on the signs themselves: the companies are also required to turn over 20 percent of the screens’ time to the DTD for arts and cultural organizations, which can either promote their events or present their own programming. DTD also produces events and attractions like Night Lights Denver,  an ongoing outdoor art installation involving light projection on certain buildings in the district; a “15-second video festival,” presenting short films made by artists on downtown LED screens; and other digital work by local, national, and international artists.

Officials in Denver created a DTD sign plan as a supplementary document to the city code, originally involving a potential for 10 signs that were strictly banned elsewhere downtown. The plan put in place some general design parameters, explains Matthew Bossler, a senior city planner for Denver. These include, for example, a limitation on the luminosity of 25 lumens, and a specification that signs be located above the ground floor]. “There’s a kind of flexibility granted in exchange for higher design standards,” Bossler adds. “It also describes where on each building facade different types of signs can occur and some additional requirements such as how to avoid residential impacts.”

Given the initial permit application process (and the aftermath of the financial crisis), the first few signs went up gradually, over a period of four or five years. The technology underpinning digital signage, which had already evolved toward LED lighting, continues to improve. “You’re looking at a technology that has changed substantially in the last 15 years,” says James Carpentier, director of state and local government affairs for the International Sign Association (ISA), a trade organization. In addition to allowing for adjustable brightness and automatic dimming, it’s now much easier to configure “hold time,” to address concerns about quickly rotating ad messages potentially distracting drivers. (A typical digital sign, or “electronic message center” in most cities is 100 square feet, compared to an average of 7,000 square feet in Las Vegas, according to the ISA.)

On a more aesthetic level, modern LED signs offer much higher resolution and better color, can automatically adjust to changing light conditions, and consume less power than earlier technologies. Modular LED panels allow for varied design options, including curved screens – like the 25-by-60-foot sign-and-screen cluster at the intersection of 14th and Champa streets on the parking garage of the Colorado Convention Center. And they’re easier to coordinate, so that programming can run in sync on multiple screens.

Ehrlich now works with other cities, including Atlanta and San Antonio, through the Urban Activation Institute. While specific implementations vary, the basic blueprint is similar: Media companies get leeway to deploy signs under certain conditions, providing a steady revenue stream for local arts or other initiatives. Previously undervalued areas get a boost, ideally helping restaurants and other businesses. Proponents also say the additional light can help promote public safety. And local government spends nothing.

Opponents counter that the signs are too bright, potentially unsafe, or compromise the authenticity and character of cityscapes. “Imagine a digital advertising dystopia,” wrote one electronic signage foe in response to San Jose’s consideration of trying its own version of Denver’s experiment. Others contend that the tie-in to arts funding is a slick trick by advertisers to gain the support of resource-strapped policy makers. Planners, meanwhile, have had to consider how to regulate the technology, developing guidelines based on size, location, and other factors.

Even in Denver, the district is a work in progress, but one that seems to have at least some fans.  Bossler, the planner, is currently managing two rezoning cases involving properties that are immediately adjacent to the DTD, whose owners are seeking to be rezoned in order to get into the district, specifically aiming for approval for large-format sign installations.

“The theater district is one that we can generally describe as being a unique sub area within downtown that draws many visitors,” Bossler says. “And the special allowances for signs can contribute to that. The electronic billboards that are allowed in the district bring light, color, and dynamism to some of the most frequented areas of downtown, particularly those that are connected to our major theaters. This creates kind of a special ambiance and liveliness in the streets and public places within the district.” It encourages walking and presents a vibrant image, he adds, drawing more people to the district’s businesses—and that kind of economic impact is a positive sign.

Rob Walker is the author of City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape and The Art of Noticing. More of his writing can be found at robwalker.substack.com.

Lead image: A moment from the Supernova digital animation festival organized by Denver Digerati, visible on a digital billboard at 14th and Champa streets in downtown Denver. Credit: Denver Digerati.

This article is reprinted with permission from Bloomberg CityLab, where it originally appeared.

At the American Institute of Architects conference this year in Boston, those dressed in black—long the unofficial uniform of uber-creative design professionals—seemed to be outnumbered. The architects prowling the convention center were more likely to be sporting button-down Oxfords or Patagonia, on their way to such sessions as “Next-Level Roofs: Energy Efficiency, Embodied Carbon, and Code Compliance.”

An architectural trend can’t be based on a wardrobe census, of course, but a shift toward more practical, sustainability-oriented work was palpable. And increasingly, that means working on retrofits, rather than creating snazzy new structures. AIA billings survey data in 2022 revealed that architects for the first time were earning more revenue for commissions on existing buildings than new construction. Recent Pritzker Prize wins by Lacaton & Vassal and David Chipperfield represent high-profile recognition of advances in restoration and renovation. Rules are being put in place to encourage adaptive reuse, as in Los Angeles, or to promote a circular economy and limit demolition, as in San Antonio. Those ordinances are alongside financial incentives offered by several local governments for converting office buildings to residential use.

So while some may still dream of becoming the next Frank Gehry or Zaha Hadid, many design professionals these days seem to be singularly—almost soberly—occupied with reworking blueprints, as part of the quest to make the built environment as green and socially responsible as possible.

“The most urgent thing that’s on our plate right now is climate action, and that we have to decarbonize very rapidly,” said Carl Elefante, author of the recently published Going for Zero: Decarbonizing the Built Environment on the Path to Our Urban Future and the architect credited with coining the phrase that the greenest building is the one that is already built.

It might be called the Retrofit Revolution. Or, more dramatically: the End of Architecture. At least as we knew it.

“Architecture’s long capital-P Project of exploring ever-more-complicated forms has finally come to an end. The heroic pursuit of formal complexity for its own sake feels like a bygone thing,” writes editor Jack Murphy in the May issue of The Architect’s Newspaper. “Architects should still make things, but perhaps they should be making maintenance plans or organization charts or business plans or adaptive reuse scenarios or affordable housing. Making form is necessary but easy; it’s the rest of the stuff that is hard.”

Does this mean nobody can build anything new, much less have any fun anymore? Not necessarily. It’s a safe bet there will always be a place for contemporary design—just as long as it’s green.

“There is only one crucial divide in architecture: architecture that is dependent on heavy fossil fuel inputs, and architecture that isn’t,” writes Barnabas Calder, historian of architecture at the University of Liverpool. In this context, style is beside the point.

The more critical distinction with this baseline specification of sustainability is that existing buildings, and all their embodied carbon, generally have an edge over new construction. So not only architecture but related fields like urban design, landscape architecture, planning, engineering, and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing work “are all duking it out, so to speak, to get a share of this emerging market sector,” said Lori Ferriss, executive director of the Built Buildings Lab.

Increasingly, advances in technology in the field are geared toward retrofits, including determining the all-important issue of cost (it can often be cheaper to renovate versus demolish and build anew, though that’s not always the case). The CARE Tool (Carbon Avoided: Retrofit Estimator) is used by builders to help measure the environmental benefits of renovations. The global design firm Gensler has developed software called Conversions+ that can help determine the viability of converting office buildings to residential use, through a cost-conscious algorithmic analysis of elements such as floor plates, window and elevator locations. A company called Existing Conditions, exhibiting at the AIA convention, offers laser scanning and radar sensors so renovators can know the location and condition of the guts of any building, from pipes to rebar.

And accordingly, much of the brain power in architecture is being devoted to things other than creating sculptural elements that are interesting to look at. The work is almost by definition not showy, in the sense that it’s more likely to be rethinking the arrangement and quality of spaces on the inside of existing buildings, rather than the appearance of facades and exteriors. Some of the best energy and innovation in the field is likely to be found not in starchitect-led firms but ones like Gensler, a roll-up-the-sleeves operation that just won the National Building Museum’s 2025 Honor Award. The company, spurred on by the need for reinvented workplace interiors post-pandemic, has excelled in what This Old House viewers might recognize as the gut rehab. Similarly, a rising star is Annabelle Selldorf, is best known for projects like her expansion of New York City’s Gilded Age Frick Collection.

“Architecture is becoming less about individual expression and more about collective responsibility,” said Harry Cliffe-Roberts, Gensler’s building transformation and adaptive reuse leader.

All kinds of design innovations, whether in new construction or retrofits, are being celebrated more for broader societal goals, like affordable housing. The winner of the Single-Stair Design Competition, for example, was recently honored at the Congress for the New Urbanism in Providence, Rhode Island. Outdated codes requiring multiple egress in multifamily projects four stories and higher have been identified as a major contributor to higher housing costs; the problematique is how to configure stairways to maintain access and safety.

A little bit nerdy, to be sure, but part and parcel of the new ethos.

As to the next logical question: Have US architecture schools kept up? A handful of institutions have prided themselves on weaving practical elements into the curriculum, from zoning to finance. It’s a bit of a subjective assessment, but those that worship a little bit less at the altar of form include Northeastern, Carnegie Mellon, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Miami.

At the Rhode Island School of Design, Liliane Wong, author of Adaptive Reuse in Architecture: A Typological Index, has catalogued 50 conversion and reuse projects worldwide, including buildings such as the TWA Hotel at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, the Caixa Forum in Madrid, and the New Museum in Berlin.

“Let’s say I’m a design professor at a top university—I’m so erudite, you can hardly understand a single word I say. Is there a pedagogy of building reuse that would interest that guy?” said Elefante. In creating that pedagogy, he said, retrofit-minded professors ask, “What are the different ways that you can intervene with an existing building? Wouldn’t this be a cool design? It’s sort of the fox guarding the henhouse on getting the designers who scorn existing buildings for their architectural character, to actually understand retrofit as something that could be an interesting design challenge.”

Those who emphasize reuse are up against a stubborn tradition, in both firm culture and design education. “There’s always been a professional bias toward building new,” said Hillary Brown, author of Revitalize | Resettle: How Main Street USA Can Provide New Beginnings for America’s Climate Displaced. “It starts in architecture school where the studios mostly emphasize new form making. The journals seem to prefer new construction … that needs to change.”

Altogether, the prospects don’t look good for architect as artist. It’s not just the technological advances of artificial intelligence, which is poised to do the work of humans just as in the fields of medicine, journalism, and law. Pattern language playbooks provide step-by-step instructions for traditional ways of building. At Northeastern, an initiative called Equitable Zoning by Design offers visualizations of residential buildouts in areas being considered for rezoning. The idea is to conjure an easily repeatable urban design that will make dense multifamily development more acceptable to wary neighbors.

All sensible, though it does raise an uncomfortable question. With all the new software and off-the-shelf guides, who needs creative types to make aesthetic judgements?

Shaking up established frameworks is never easy, as George Clooney, playing the journalist Edward R. Murrow, recognizes in the opening monologue of Good Night, and Good Luck: “This just might do nobody any good.”

What seems likely is that the top architecture schools may have students learn about Le Corbusier as historical artifact—but disabuse their graduates of any notion of operating like him. With an eye toward being that much more employable, the next generation of architects may well demand it.

Anthony Flint is a senior fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, host of the Land Matters podcast, and a contributing editor to Land Lines.

Lead image: In Boston, this former office building at 31 Milk Street is slated for conversion to 110 residential units. Credit: Jimmy Emerson via Flickr.

Public land use projects and digital gaming don’t seem to have much in common. But the next wave of innovation to shape cities may come from a technology that’s blurring those lines. Last year, for instance, the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) set out to win voter approval for a tax to fund a new transit plan in Columbus, called LinkUs, that included a new bus rapid transit corridor. To make its case, the agency needed to help officials, and ultimately the public, visualize the positive changes this could bring to the corridor, adjacent neighborhoods, and the commuting experience. That’s a familiar challenge, but COTA’s strategy included an unusual component: augmented reality (AR) technology.

Artists and game designers have made creative use of AR—which layers digital images on top of real-world views seen through phones, headsets, and other devices—for years. In popular games like Pokémon Go, you peer at the world through your device’s screen, and the physical environment is suddenly inhabited by animated creatures and other digital objects relevant to game play. But AR can also be used to layer visualizations of more civic-minded elements onto city spaces: public art, monuments, and even transportation infrastructure.

“A lot of presentations were being done in the community via PowerPoint or a pitch deck,” recalls Aslyne Rodriguez, COTA’s senior director of regional strategic partnerships. “However, there was this need for and want to have something that was a more tangible experience.” The planned corridor was simply a highway. How to engage citizens with what its future could be? “It was important for people to know what bus rapid transit looks like, but we also wanted to show them what happens when you bring bus rapid transit,” Rodriguez continues. “New development pops up, new business, new grocery stores. And [the project included] protected bike lanes and connections to trails. So it was a very big message.”

Learning about AR led them to inCitu, a technology firm based in New York that has produced a range of AR experiences, from walking tours to visualizations of municipal projects. With additional partners including the strategic engagement firm MurphyEpson, they identified key sites along the current, regular bus route and devised an immersive tour: Participants would use their phone to scan a QR code, activating AR-enhanced depictions of what was planned. Guided, immersive bus tours ran twice a week for six months, attended by hundreds of community stakeholders. In addition, the partners placed QR codes on existing bus shelters and other points along the route to make the AR pitch even more accessible for those unable to take the guided tour. Voters approved the plan’s funding.

Of course, COTA also used traditional outreach methods, including community meetings and presentations, and a social media push (the mayor even posted a selfie in the AR version of a new transit station). But this form of digital immersion offers a distinct engagement experience. “There is something magical about scanning a QR code, raising your phone, and seeing the future,” says inCitu founder and CEO Dana Chermesh-Reshef.

COTA’s successful experience was cited in a December 2024 report from Urban Tech Hub at Cornell Tech’s Jacobs Institute that explored the possibilities of augmented reality for cities and municipalities. But those possibilities may also introduce challenges; consider, after all, the disruptions caused by the emergence of ride-sharing, short-term rentals, and smart-city technologies, says Greg Lindsay, the report’s author and a former urban tech fellow at the Urban Tech Hub. Lindsay wrote the afterword for the Lincoln Institute’s City Tech book and delivered remarks on cities and technology at a recent Lincoln Institute convening on land policy and digitalization.

AR, Lindsay argues, is at heart a new way of using public spaces by adding digital layers to them, potentially raising questions about how such content (commercial and otherwise) should be overseen or regulated, and who will end up setting those terms: tech platforms, cities, or some other entity. The challenge for cities, Lindsay says, is: “Can you get better at anticipating disruptors and heading them off at the pass?”

This is why one of the recommendations in Lindsay’s report is that cities should be open to experimenting with AR sooner rather than later, to develop a comfort level with the technology, even if potential use cases aren’t fully determined. While COTA provides a striking example of using AR in a way that directly impacted land use decisions, Lindsay points out that collaborations with artists, educators, and civic groups can also play a role. This year, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the New York Parks Department, and the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation presented an AR restaging of the artists’ famous 2005 installation, The Gates, creating a digital version of the piece’s 7,500 saffron-colored panels, visible through a smartphone. And artist Marcus Brown used AR to create what amounted to a digital installation around New Orleans, mapping and illustrating the history of the slave trade in that city. The possibilities, say AR proponents, are nearly endless.

These nascent technologies have considerable potential to improve cities, argues Chip Giller, cofounder and executive director of Agog: The Immersive Media Institute. “Storytelling can become three-dimensional, and planning tools can become three-dimensional,” he says. “So rather than just having a charette or having a computer model, you’ll be able to actually step into what the future could be.” Agog works with creators and nonprofit leaders to “harness the power of extended reality,” or XR, a term that encompasses augmented reality, virtual reality, and adjacent technologies.

One of Agog’s partners, Arizona State University, is in the third year of an ambitious project to reimagine and redevelop 14 vacant parcels in Los Angeles owned by Caltrans, the California transit agency. ASU is adopting the parcels, which Caltrans owns but had no plans for, under the agency’s Adopt-A-Highway program. With the help of other partners including Los Angeles Trade Tech Professor Marcela Oliva and the Collaboratorium, ASU’s Narrative and Emerging Media program is using technology to help engage community members in plans to develop the sites, says Nonny de la Peña, director of the ASU program and a pioneer in immersive digital storytelling.

Many of the lots are highway adjacent and awkwardly sized and located, and some have become targets for dumping and graffiti. The goal is not only to use AR and other immersive tech to plan new uses, but to help bring community members into the process, says de la Peña, “to regreen [the spaces], turn them into parks.” One space along the 110 freeway through downtown, not far from ASU’s satellite campus, has been turned into a community garden and park, and the partnership has broken ground on a second space and was choosing a third this spring.

As de la Peña explains, the project involves creating a three-dimensional digital twin of each site that students, residents, and stakeholders can experiment with, shaping what the space might become. “Before we even update the physical side of the site, we’re working with the community by teaching them some basic skills of creating 3D models,” says Sultan Sharrief, an ASU researcher and self-described “media scientist” in de la Peña’s program. “We’re providing the tools and the kind of structure—for example, how do we create the digital library of plants that will succeed in these spaces so they can then design with those in mind?” They’re now equipping the first site with sensors to keep its digital twin updated, so community members can keep tweaking the space. “We’re just getting started,” de la Peña says.

InCitu, the firm that helped bring AR into the Columbus transportation effort, is now involved in projects in Phoenix, New York, and other cities. In Washington, DC, the company is working with both the planning office and the office of technology, and it’s starting work with a downtown revitalization effort in Myrtle Beach, SC. It also now provides a web-based AR platform called inCituAR, designed to let planners and architects share their ideas and proposals, to experiment directly with the technology and its capabilities. In other words, plenty of municipal entities seem to be taking Lindsay’s advice to get familiar with AR and other immersive tools while they are still in relatively early stages.

“It’s not about the cool technology,” says inCitu’s Chermesh-Reshef, “it’s about the fact that this technology actually enables easy engagement and effective engagement.” The most promising projects, she says, are attempting to address one of the most familiar and longstanding challenges, and aspirations, of planning: “Our goal is to foster better conversations.”

Rob Walker is the author of City Tech: 20 Apps, Ideas, and Innovators Changing the Urban Landscape and The Art of Noticing. More of his writing can be found at robwalker.substack.com.

Lead image: Augmented reality allows this tablet owner to visualize a proposed affordable housing development in the Bronx, New York. The building visible behind the people on the screen replaces the parked cars in the actual background. Credit: inCitu.