Category: Public Policy
Climate Change: Making the most of failure
Though it surely happens in sports at all levels, there’s one phenomenon that’s particularly common in youth sports: A game in which you’re so outmatched, so fundamentally inferior to your opponent that the outcome, minus Divine or supernatural intervention, is essentially guaranteed.
You’re going to lose.
... Continue Reading
Moving Beyond “Smart Growth” to a More Holistic City Agenda
Originally published almost four years ago and every bit as relevant today.
I have spent most of the last twenty years working on an agenda grounded in, for lack of a better phrase, “smart growth.” That agenda basically holds that our regions must replace suburban sprawl with more compact forms of growth and... Continue Reading
Resolved for 2018: Fewer delusions, more reality-based planning
Okay, so we’re shaking off the shock therapy of 2017 and ready to move on, right?
Let’s start with admitting some of the stuff a lot of us got wrong about challenges and solutions in municipal and regional planning. Such as: Our misplaced overconfidence in the stability of basic institutions, especially those requiring... Continue Reading
Year End Reflections: Gratitude for Livable Places
As the year draws to a close, reflection is an important rite of passage: celebrating, mourning, learning, and letting go. 2017 has not been the sort of year in which gratitude is the obvious emotion of choice on many levels. Yet the act of searching for what is beneficial, transformative, and noteworthy helps process... Continue Reading
Category Economic Development, Environment | Sustainability, Health, Planning and Design, Public Policy, Resilience
Tags Hazel Borys, Resilience
Storytelling Part II: Getting to Getting Things Done
First a review:
In a post last month, I made a pitch for organizing community storytelling around getting stuff done. I acknowledged how hard it is to do that in the current political environment, which is increasingly an arena of competing tribal identities and mutually exclusive convictions:
A community that has... Continue Reading
Category Community Development, Planning and Design, Public Engagement, Public Policy, Theory and Practice
Tags Ben Brown, storytelling
A Hurricane Response Lesson: Disrupt the cycle of futility
Those of us who spent extended time in coastal Mississippi and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 are watching the weather and reading the news with a serious case of Groundhog Day. It’s rescue-recriminate-rebuild-repeat. Over and over again.
(more…) Continue Reading
Good Side of the Downside: The end is (only) near
Chuck Marohn needs a hug.
That was my first thought reading this in his July 17 Strong Towns post :
Let me be clear about what I actually imagine is in store for us. I look at America's cities, towns and neighborhoods and I see overwhelming levels of fragility. I see a development pattern that destroys wealth; the... Continue Reading
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow, Here the Day After That
They may not be new but I was recently introduced to a series of comics by English artist Grayson Perry taking on the world of creative arts, particularly one entitled “Gentrification.”
The tale is familiar. Old industry fades, artists take possession of the infrastructure, ragtag commerce blossoms and, ultimately,... Continue Reading
Category Community Development, Development, Economic Development, Environment | Sustainability, Planning and Design, Public Policy, Resilience
Tags Scott Doyon
Comp Plan for Westeros? Same issues, more swordplay
Frustrated with efforts to pull your little kingdom together for long term strategizing? It could be worse. You could be caught up in the public outreach drama in Westeros. The battles renew on Sunday night, when HBO debuts season seven of “Game of Thrones.”
The addictive series provides way more sex, blood and... Continue Reading
Tags Ben Brown
Livability, Division, Exclusion and Other Naughty Words
This is what we’ve come to: An escalation in urban property values and cost of living so extreme in some quarters that there are now those who, with a straight face, argue against efforts to improve neighborhoods. Don’t bring those improvements goes the often implied but less frequently articulated point of view, as... Continue Reading
Tags livability, Scott Doyon