Category: Public Engagement

Placemaking often comes down to preserving, repairing, or intensifying urban or rural landscapes with public spaces at the heart of each neighborhood. Creative placemaking can take that to another level, helping to tease out the character of a place and celebrate it in an unusually insightful and invigorating way. A way... Continue Reading

Enjoying the multiple conversations that Monday's piece started about Little Free Libraries, I can't help but share the two that our family has been enjoying this summer. In doing so, there's a striking difference between the development pattern of Monday's neighbourhood in Kansas versus this 100-year-old Winnipeg... Continue Reading

A recent trip to Chicago on the first weekend of summer reinforced the importance of great public art. After a particularly harsh winter, the welcoming parks, squares, and plazas of the city were burgeoning with people soaking in the sunshine. Coming home to talk with my husband, who happens to be an art museum director,... Continue Reading

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

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

High on my list of must-read columnists is James Surowiecki of The New Yorker. His “Twilight of the Brands” piece in the February 17-24 edition provides a good example of how he takes apart outworn axioms of business success, then, from the wreckage, assembles a model better suited for the here and now. (more…) Continue Reading

For years, I’ve been jotting down inverse relationships as they crop up in my professional and personal life. Here, for instance, is one from my previous career as a journalist: The quality of reporting at any event is inversely proportional to the number of reporters covering it. Think Super Bowls, political conventions... Continue Reading

The places we inhabit are rarely if ever arbitrary. They’re the products of intention. Personal. Economic. Environmental. Religious. We choose for ourselves, individually and collectively, the kind of places we want and -- through leadership, policy, investment, advocacy, action and, at times, inaction -- those places... 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

Slow and steady progress is built on an ongoing series of course corrections. Subtle variations in direction based on new variables, new challenges, and new innovations. As times and circumstances change, some things inevitably become less productive. Or effective. Or conducive to contemporary sensibilities. So, we... Continue Reading