Community Development
Remember that Katrina Cottages thing? Whatever happened to that?
This is the second of two parts addressing Hurricane Katrina 10 years after the storm. The first looked at issues in New Orleans. This one focuses on one hoped-for innovation in the storm’s wake in Coastal Mississippi. Right about now, a couple and their two children are getting much-needed affordable housing help via a move…
Read MoreTop 10 Techniques for Educating Community Leaders about Placemaking
Extraordinary strides have been made in the advancement of placemaking over the past twenty-five years. Think about it. In the years prior, the term “placemaking” wasn’t even in common use by developers, designers and planners. Nor were terms such as form-based code, new urbanism, smart growth, transect, charrette, visual preference survey, traditional neighborhood development, transit-oriented…
Read MoreKatrina ‘Ten Years After’: And the band plays on
I guess it says something about where I am on life’s conception-to-compost journey that the phrase “Ten Years After” evokes a forgettable British group from the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. But, hey, let’s at least credit Alvin Lee with capturing a timeless sentiment in his lyrics for the band’s 1971 hit, “I’d Love to…
Read MoreIt’s a Trend: More Businesses Are Choosing Downtowns and Walkable Locations
As I reported earlier this year, more and more businesses are choosing to locate in downtowns and walkable suburban locations, in part to attract younger workers who prefer a less car-dependent, more urban lifestyle. In some cases, as with hospitality giant Marriott, the preference is being expressed in planned moves from sprawling suburbs to transit-accessible places with…
Read MorePope Goes Global: Let’s talk local
Even before last week’s official release of Pope Francis’s encyclical on climate change, advocates and defenders were honing their talking points. In April, liberal Catholic author Gary Wills upped the ante on what was anticipated — accurately, it turns out — as the the pontiff’s vigorous critique of global inequities exacerbated by climate change: “The…
Read MoreToronto’s Gardiner Expressway: Green light for removal this week?
Last week, passing my Canadian citizenship exam was a poignant moment for me. I am grateful to have dual citizenship in Canada and the US, with the right to live and work in both great countries. I realize that we often spend time on this blog talking about what stands in the way of great…
Read More“General Welfare” for the Next Generation
Lately I’ve been thinking about “health, safety, and general welfare” — the basis by which zoning is typically legitimized and measured — and wondering just how great a disconnect needs to form between our purported values and our land use regulations before we admit that something’s not working.
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Let’s take a wild stab at a generalization: Success at building a business or growing a non-profit or making a community more livable depends a lot on trust. You have to keep delivering what you promise to get people to keep buying what you’re selling.
Read More‘Gentrification’ Redux: Wealth, opportunity, community
It’s pretty clear that breaking news in American cities is not going to let us duck debates about race, inequality and public policy. About time, right? Still, it doesn’t feel like we’re getting anywhere, what with partisans screaming, “You just don’t get it!” to their opposites across a wasteland of failed ideas. We seem to…
Read MoreSuburban Retrofits: A deep dive
A couple weeks ago, Ellen Dunham-Jones produced a Placemaking@Work webinar that she described as a deep dive into the suburban retrofit case studies, with an hour-long lecture in preparation for the 23rd Congress for the New Urbanism in Dallas, April 29 through May 2. This session is free until the beginning of the CNU here,…
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