The Cotton District, in Starkville, Miss. (This and all photos below by Sara Hines)
Not sure how this place eluded my classical radar, but Starkville, Mississippi, home of Mississippi State, has a neighborhood called the Cotton District, between the downtown of the city of 23,000 and its university campus. Wikipedia calls it the nation’s first New Urbanist district, but it was conceived by Dan Camp, a former shop teacher, 20 years before the Congress of the New Urbanism was chartered, and at least 15 years before the development of Seaside, Florida – long considered the first New Urbanist town.
Dan Camp, according to this history of the Cotton District on its website, started building on a shoestring for students (also mostly living on a shoestring), and ended up with a lovely, thriving place that I feel embarrassed never to have heard of. He eventually became mayor of Starkville for a…
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