Category: Community Development
Reconsidering “You just don’t get it!” as a Community Engagement Strategy
In the last month, the busy folks at the Pew Research Center have released two hefty analyses of political polarization in America, pretty much confirming what we’ve come to suspect as the cause of semi-permanent dysfunction in D.C., in state capitals and, increasingly, in local government.
If you’re looking for... Continue Reading
Category Community Development
Tags Ben Brown, Pew Research Center
Urbanists Soak Up Buffalo: PlaceMakers empty their notebooks
The 22nd annual gathering of the CNU wrapped up Saturday night, June 7, in Buffalo. We’re looking forward to the recordings at cnu.org over the next few weeks to fill the inevitable gaps, since the competing sessions and hallway conversations presented the usual embarrassment of riches.
Rather than go for a tidy... Continue Reading
Québec City: La ville de l’amour dans la belle province
Feeling particularly grateful that winter in Winnipeg is finally over, I’m thinking about some of my happy places. What’s more romantic than Paris in the spring? It’s a question that’ll get you 26 million hits on Google, so I won’t dive in. Romantic cities will get you 53 million hits, with Paris, Boston, Venice,... Continue Reading
Category Community Development, Planning and Design
Aggravated 15 Year Olds as a Measure of Place
I’m always on the lookout for simpler ways to make important points about how we grow. Ways that people intuitively understand, and can easily share with others.
Regular readers here may recall the last time I talked about this, when my mention of the neighborhood-measuring popsicle test — the ability of an 8 year... Continue Reading
Tea Party Taps Hippie Wisdom: How’s that working out?
So I’m sitting in one of those community meetings we’ve all become familiar with of late. A local Tea Party type is making a passionate pitch for what his group considers Constitutional guarantees against government planning, and I get this deju vu tug.
I’ve been here before. I’VE BEEN THIS BEFORE.
If you... Continue Reading
“People Habitat”: Kaid Benfield takes Smart Growth to a higher level
For several weeks now I’ve intended to write up my thoughts on “People Habitat,” the recently-released book from NRDC smart growth sensei -- and friend -- Kaid Benfield. Not that it’s anything he needs, mind you. A quick look at his reviews over on Amazon reveals a diverse collection of accolades, consistent only... Continue Reading
Let Love Rule: Resilience in Mesquite
Crossing Campo Street from downtown Las Cruces into the Mesquite Historic District is like crossing between two urban worlds that are often misunderstood.
To the west is one of the country’s textbook examples of everything that could go wrong with federally subsidized Urban Renewal, including the obligatory seas of... Continue Reading
Tags Las Cruces, New Mexico
Gentrification: We’re both the problem and the solution
Almost twenty years ago, just married, my wife and I bought an old house in a friendly but economically depressed old neighborhood. It was, at the time, a predominantly black neighborhood though, like many historic neighborhoods in and around Atlanta that predate our tumultuous, race-driven urban disinvestment of the 60s... Continue Reading
Tags gentrification, Scott Doyon
Stayin’ Alive: The life and death prospects of community ties
“We had better get together on this or we’re going to die.”
People talk a lot about community these days. How we’ve lost whatever sense of it we might have once had. How we don’t really know each other much anymore. How we yearn for more intimacy, with connection that transcends the typically weak ties of... Continue Reading
Reaching the Limits of Passionate Defense: Time to turn back
When House Speaker John Boehner, indulging his inner Howard Beale, launched a Republican counterattack against the party’s far right wing, it seemed to me the GOP was finally rubbing up against the same rough edges of reality that have become apparent in big-time sports. And the lessons apply as much to civic life in... Continue Reading
Category Community Development, Theory and Practice