Scott Doyon

I live in an old house that overlooks a single-track CSX rail line. Between my front gate and the train is a two-lane, neighborhood-edge thoroughfare with a speed limit of 35 mph and an average speed closer to 40. Though it functions as an in-town, city street, it’s classified as a state highway by the Georgia DOT,... Continue Reading

It wasn’t intentional but a look back at the past few weeks of PlaceShakers reveals that we’ve been working a bit of a theme. It began when I wrote about the failure of planners to ask meaningful questions, and how that not only sets the stage for unmet community expectations, but devalues the art and craft of... Continue Reading

Community fascinates me. Not just the idea of it, but the dynamics, and how those dynamics end up stoking or choking our collective efforts to be together. Having worked in a lot of different places, I’ve had opportunity to study community in action, at both its strongest and weakest, in all different contexts -- economic,... Continue Reading

“What would you like to see here?” And there it is. Perhaps the most inane question ever posed in the course of a public design process. And posed it is, constantly. “We’re doing a master plan for downtown. What would you like to see here?” It’s crazy. In one sweeping question, practitioners not... Continue Reading

Roughly two hundred years ago, working in a little Bavarian workshop, Samuel Soemmering created a crude device that, refined by others, would revolutionize communications for the emerging industrial age: the telegraph. A hundred years thereafter, post-Victorians began to ponder its evolution -- wireless telegraphy... Continue Reading

Over the course of the past six or eight decades, certain things have come to define, in part, our modern existence: Making a living out of your home has been increasingly restricted, especially in predominantly residential areas; the production of goods has fallen to fewer and larger hands; and we’ve now heard just... Continue Reading

Earlier this month, as Hazel mentioned in her city-as-running-buddy post last week, our travels took us to Wilmington, North Carolina, where we were doing some long-term master planning for a neighboring town. Part of that job involved a tour around the area, scoping out different models and precedents, and that’s... Continue Reading

First off, before I’m assaulted by urban defenders in an all-out flame war, let me clarify that my tongue is planted firmly in cheek here. A little background: I’ve written before on the intersection between traditional / smart growth environments and child-rearing, first at the level of the neighborhood and... Continue Reading

“I don’t shop at Walmart.” Talk about a loaded phrase. Five simple words, but issue them collectively and you effectively open a Pandora’s Box of suggestion: Where you stand economically. Where you stand politically. How you feel about the environment. Or localism. Or capitalism. It’s like erecting a giant... Continue Reading

A proposed Trader Joe’s in Boulder, Colorado, brought up an interesting question this week in a spirited exchange on the Pro-Urb urban issues listserv: In auto-centric places where streets and infrastructure lack any sense of meaningful pedestrian amenity, who should take the lead on turning things around? That... Continue Reading