Solomon said in the statement that the housing, urban buildings, neighborhood design and urban repair that DSDP has done for decades are a perfect corollary to the sophisticated environmentalism, design sensibility and applied science that Mithun brings to the table. “It is rare that a business merger actually represents a conjoining of ideas that reinforces one another and extends their range.”

Solomon tells GlobeSt.com that Mithun has established a broad conceptual frame to direct physical design to the issues that are most important in the world. “They have also assembled the people to fill out that framework with specialized skills at the highest level. We are part of that growth process; Mithun brings a broader environmental focus and a much expanded playing field to us.”

Both executives tell GlobeSt.com that cities have been loved and cherished for millennia, and today’s demographics are spurring a revitalization of that love. As GlobeSt.com reported in July, higher-density developments around urban transportation facilities is a resurgent trend in some of the larger California cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and even parts of San Diego, say industry experts. With single-family homeownership challenges and the time and cost of driving commutes—not to mention the ongoing volatility of the multifamily sector—cities are seeing renewed vitality through transit-oriented development. “The Urban Land Institute and other urban-planning associations have for the last several years been concerned about trying to reorient development to higher densities around transportation facilities or nodes,” Howard Ellman of Buchalter Nemer’s real estate practice group in San Francisco, told GlobeSt.com at the time.