August 8, 2019. I spend a fair amount of time discussing the highest and best use of property with potential investors and property owners. The concept of highest and best use is one of the fundamental principles of real estate value.

August 1, 2019. How smart is your electric meter? Over half of the electricity customers in the U.S. now have smart meters. And guess what? Oklahoma is a leader in installations of the technology, with over 80% of Oklahoma electric customers now using them.

July 25, 2019. I was invited to attend a National Association of Realtors presentation titled “Smart Growth for the 21st Century” and hosted by the Edmond Board of Realtors. Nate Johnson, Real Estate Solutions Group in St. Louis, did a fantastic job delivering his Principles of Smart Growth.

July 18, 2019. In terms of resilience, a weather-tight roof is considered the first line of defense against damaging storms. This is why the Institute for Building and Home Safety created the Fortified roof program.

July 11, 2019. We need trees and should be committed to increasing our tree canopy in the urban environments; however, we must also mitigate risk associated with the same.

July 3, 2019. Did your mother teach you to share? Do you like interaction with your neighbors? I want to introduce you to a type of neighborhood that is gaining popularity in the U.S. that requires sharing some common areas and incorporates interaction with your neighbors. It’s called a pocket neighborhood.

June 27, 2019. Electric scooters are rapidly becoming a ubiquitous feature of the urban fabric.

June 20, 2019. The success of coffee shops throughout time can be accounted for by their profound social and cultural value.

June 13, 2019. Surveys indicate that one of society’s biggest problems is loneliness of citizens. Community-driven residential is seen as a potential solution to this issue.

June 6, 2019. Developers must consider the impact of their projects on the community. Prudent developers go a step further and actually allow the community to participate in the design.

May 30, 2019. I am writing this from the Grand Rotunda in the British Museum. The 2019 University of Central Oklahoma London/Belfast/Dublin Study Tour is in full swing.

May 23, 2019. I may have had the most interesting day of my eight years of coming to London to teach and do research.

May 16, 2019. Downtown was always the most vibrant heart of the American city. Every city had one, a pulsing commercial center where you could find banks, businesses, hotels, department stores, and theaters. Downtown was the economic engine that fueled the city.

May 9, 2019. We are witnessing a shrinking in the square footage in nearly every category of real estate in the U.S. This is not in total square footage nationally, but in individual spaces.

May 2, 2019. There has been an eruption of mixed-use developments sprout up across the country. A mixed-use development is a combination of residential and nonresidential uses in the same building or complex.

April 25, 2019. While the role of the built environment to society should not be compared to that of human life, we should also not ignore the value and impact these structures have on our society.

April 18, 2019. J. David Chapman returns to his weekly Lot Lines real estate column after winning his Edmond City Council race.

April 11, 2019. I was one of 1,000 people who left inspired from the mayor’s annual prayer breakfast, and was at my desk at 9:01 a.m. on the 17th floor of the First National Center.

April 4, 2019. The term “mort main,” which is Latin for dead hands, refers to the ever-deteriorating condition of a building or land when it is owned by an entity that lives forever; as nerd lawyers say, in perpetuity.

March 28, 2019. One of the biggest challenges in urban infill development is to cobble together enough land to develop a viable project. Sometimes the end results can be much different than imagined when the assemblage effort first began.