Category: Economic Development

Hi, my name is Hazel, and I'm an addict. For the last 25 years, I've been addicted to a string of takers. Time-draining, money-grubbing, fat-building, resource-depleting, toxic machines. For the last 18 months, I've been clean. Ever since our move to Canada. And this last weekend, I realized I may be cured. (more…) Continue Reading

Not so long ago, fellow urban scribe and recently elected mayor of Concrete, Washington, Jason Miller, recommended the book, “13 Ways to Kill Your Community.” The timing was fortuitous. For a while, in an ongoing series of internal conversations, I’d been wrestling with a fundamental question of human nature: Are... Continue Reading

Last Friday, I attended an inspiring Richard Florida luncheon put on by the Winnipeg Chamber, and can’t resist sharing the high points with you. Technology, talent and tolerance are essential to fostering creative cultures. When we talk about the creative class, we aren’t talking about some rarified, exclusive group... Continue Reading

In her September 2011 blog, Special Districts Getting All Mixed Up, Hazel Borys questioned why we treat large format areas with distinctive uses, such as manufacturing or aviation, as “special” to the point of exclusion from our efforts to integrate all urban land uses and activities into a spatially coherent whole,... Continue Reading

If I’d been paying better attention (which is how I start a lot of sentences these days), I could have begun my reeducation in the ways things work in 1986. That’s when film director David Lynch gave us Blue Velvet. Back then, the way Dennis Hopper and Isabella Rossellini embraced Lynch’s sex and violence mash-ups... Continue Reading

Git ‘Er Done | Hazel BorysThis year's CNU was all about doing again, unlike the past few years where we've focused on stop-gap measures to redirect our investment choices to more resilient patterns. Looks like they might be starting to pay off. Still, we have plenty of hard work ahead to remove both legal... Continue Reading

I tend to take the road less traveled. For whatever reason, conventional approaches have never interested me. And the process I came up with for my city’s comp plan was no different. Why? Well, first off, conventionalism leads to..... "BORING!" (Yell it out like no one can hear you!) (more…) Continue Reading

The other day, I was riding my bike from a deeply walkable, bikeable neighbourhood to a more auto-dominated environment, and I was struck again by the tactile response when you’re walking or biking through this change. In the walkable neighbourhood, fellow cyclists were in the streets or in bike lanes, mixing safely... Continue Reading

"For forty-one million, you built a playoff team. You lost Damon, Giambi, Isringhausen, Peña and you won more games without them than you did with them. You won the exact same number of games that the Yankees won, but the Yankees spent one point four million per win and you paid two hundred and sixty thousand. I know... Continue Reading

As the planning profession roils in the confluence of the 21st century’s Great Recession, Peak Oil/Peak Auto Travel, Millennial [Re]urbanization, and the borderline religious fervor of sustainability, I have officially declared that ours is not the same planning profession John Nolen built. So, how can planning rebuild... Continue Reading