A Placemaking Journal

What is it about a place that engages one so fully that years after moving away, a return trip feels as if you’ve never left? As if you never want to leave? It’s the elusive immersive environment we urban design types are always aiming to achieve. Beware. A personal reverie is heading your way, to help answer that... Continue Reading

This morning I took a moment to reflect upon the challenges and tragedy of the past year -- BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well, Aussie wildfires, the Christchurch and Haiti earthquakes -- until, as a Californian, my mind inevitably drifted back to current events in Japan and their nuclear radiation currently floating its... Continue Reading

So I’m checking out the debut of the Onion News Network and two things occurred to me: First, sadly for the Onion writers, cable news is inoculated against parody. What passes for news and analysis on most cable shows satirizes itself. Hence Jon Stewart’s brilliant strategy of curating and juxtaposing actual news... Continue Reading

In 1992, Rage Against the Machine’s Zach De La Rocha offered a dire warning to a restless but aimless Generation X: “If we don’t take action now,” he sang, “we’ll settle for nothing later.” An anthemic rallying cry and yet, just ten years thereafter, Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard was introducing those... Continue Reading

I just heard from a colleague who had a developer tell him something along the lines of: "New Urbanism is too risky and too expensive because, you know, Kentlands failed." That’s not an uncommon belief. What is uncommon, however, for anyone on the receiving end of such broad brush generalizations, is an easy response... Continue Reading

Federal government to sustainability efforts: You're terminated. In a blockbuster-style showdown, the House Appropriations Committee started a furor this month as they proposed the elimination of HUD, USDOT and EPA sustainability programs in 2011-12, as well as suggesting the rescinding of dollars already awarded by... Continue Reading

More than three decades ago, sociologist Ernest Becker published The Denial of Death which made the argument that the fear of death, in all its irrevocability and finality, provides a unifying, baseline reality for humans. We may be overwhelmed and confused by an increasing number of competing “truths,” wrote Becker,... Continue Reading

How California will redevelop its existing communities in the future is up for debate. And, it's about time. The role of redevelopment in shaping our built environment came to its crescendo in the halcyon days of 2005 over Kelo vs. New London. Today, Susette Kelo's home sits as a vacant scar on business-as-usual redevelopment... Continue Reading

It’s officially over. The flush era for planners and designers, when utopian villages and new towns could grow from dreams and piles of private sector cash? Long gone. Now comes the revolution. What the revolt will look like is under debate. And not surprisingly, the most intense discussions are joined by those... Continue Reading

In the economic development world, we're always trying to grow our economic base. And by that we mean goods and services that we export, not just what we use in our local markets. That might include university services, tourism, and any products that we pack and ship, or regional retail that we steal from our neighbors. We... Continue Reading