Category: Public Policy
Katrina’s Fifth Anniversary: Getting Real in Mississippi
Every year since Hurricane Katrina mauled the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf coasts, I’ve returned to Mississippi around the storm’s August 29 anniversary to renew friendships and refine my capacity for humility. The friendships have turned out to be the most rewarding outcomes of the 2005 Mississippi Renewal Forum,... Continue Reading
Wrestling with Jane, Robert and Andrés
Recently, I have been intrigued by newly emerging books and articles critical of Jane Jacobs’ legacy on our built environment. Fifty years ago, she was the community activist who ‘saved’ New York city’s Greenwich Village and went on to become the post-modern icon to inspire citizens and urbanist to this day. She... Continue Reading
Sustainability’s Triple Bottom Line: Tool for Commit-a-Phobes?
As a recovering journalist, I’m working hard to suppress old impulses. But habits of a couple decades are hard to shake. Which is why I’m struggling with familiar twitches of cynicism when it comes to “sustainability.”
We’ve reached a point where just about everybody is laying claim to a sustainability strategy,... Continue Reading
Category Public Policy
The Suburbs: Arcade Fire, Childhood Memory, and the Future of Growth
I’m in my 40s. I grew up in the suburbs. It was awesome. And then it wasn’t.
Never before and, perhaps, never again will there be as efficient and reliable a machine for manufacturing idealized childhood memories. The suburbs of the 60s and 70s, maybe even the 80s, were like some sort of paradise.
(more…) Continue Reading
Brave New Codes Reach Tipping Point: When, Where, Why?
A year ago, Apple's sales of its iPhone and iPod Touch eclipsed 40 million units, confirming their potential to fundamentally retool our future opportunities and patterns of daily life.
Today, a year later, form-based codes hit a similar milestone, with similar implications, as over 330 cities and towns around the world... Continue Reading
Planning & Zoning: The Musical
When was the last time you heard someone make the case for the “soulfulness” of zoning? Or capture the essence of “third place” theory in a song?
Unless you’ve been listening to singer/songwriter Melanie Hammet, you probably haven’t experienced the connection, at least not quite in this way and certainly... Continue Reading
18th New Urbanist Congress: Best Ever?
What’s constitutes “best ever” depends on the takeaways, right? And when it comes to conferences, we could be talking takeaways that aren’t products of the event itself. Like maybe you got a job or connected with a soul mate. Let’s call that the upside of unintended consequences.
(more…) Continue Reading
Zoning: No Longer Just for Nerds
Remember when you could empty a room by trying to work zoning philosophy into a conversation? Okay, you can still do that in most places. But the coolness quotient is on the rise, we swear.
Consider the adoption late last year of a form-based code in Miami, surely one of the most exotic political environments in North... Continue Reading
What’s So Smart About the SmartCode? And Why Do We Need It?
What the world definitely does not need are more complicated rules for doing anything. So why are planners imposing a whole new approach to zoning on communities?
To planning pros, the question seems unfair. New regulatory approaches grow from necessity. The old ones simply don’t work for getting many communities... Continue Reading
Tags form-based code, Geoff Dyer
Innovation on the Road to Oblivion?
Context is everything.
The New York Times reports with unease that the FDA has approved statin drug Crestor’s use in a preventive capacity for those not currently diagnosed with cholesterol problems.
The degree to which this represents innovation in medicine is a topic to be debated elsewhere. What matters to me is... Continue Reading
Category Planning and Design, Public Policy