The Designer Discount

To the select group of common rituals that really attract people’s attention -- like stepping on the scale, enjoying a really good piece of cheese cake, spotting the tattoo that suddenly appeared over your teenage daughter’s navel -- add one more: Filling the gas tank. After languishing as a non-issue for years, the cost of fuel is pushing its way back onto the public agenda. Urban planners have long understood the key ingredient to fuel-efficiency is neighborhood design: Putting people and the places they want to be in closer proximity, otherwise known in planner-speak as "density."