Demographics | Page 2

Sort by Category
Demographics

March 15, 2016 | 12:51 pm

The Next Frontier for Compact Walkability? It’s gotta be the burbs

This weekend in Miami, the Congress for the New Urbanism is staging one of the periodic Councils it uses to focus perspectives and best practices on topics of growing concern to CNU members and fellow travelers. This one is all about building “a Better Burb.”

The idea, says CNU CEO Lynn Richards, is “to leverage the momentum from the revival of the city.”

Local and regional governments in outlying areas, says Richards, are beginning to recognize the advantages of reversing sprawl — and the risks of not acting. “And they’re asking for tools and strategies to start or accelerate their suburban transformation. That’s what we’ll be focusing on this weekend.”

Category Demographics, Development, Economic Development, Planning and Design, Public Policy, Theory and PracticeLeave a CommentTags Ben Brown, Home Builders, Sprawl Repair, suburban retrofit, Urban Land Institute

September 28, 2015 | 8:32 am

The Unkickable Can: Towards a ‘Livability Synthesis’

Maybe it’s a brief glimpse, inspired by Pope Francis’s visit, of a collective will to be better humans. Or maybe it’s just the math. But I’m feeling more hopeful about future traction for arguments — and for action — for more meaningfully connected, livable communities.

Category Community Development, Demographics, Economic Development, Public Policy3 CommentsTags aging, Ben Brown, demographics

August 31, 2015 | 9:51 am

Take These Jobs and…
(You know the rest)

Cheerleaders for American business used to get peeved when cynics contorted a quote by General Motors CEO Charles Erwin Wilson in 1953. The popular, misinterpreted version: “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.” What Wilson actually said: “I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa.”

Category Community Development, Demographics, Economic Development, Planning and Design, ResilienceLeave a CommentTags Ben Brown, economic development, job creators, jobs, small business, start-up

June 29, 2015 | 12:01 am

It’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 city amenities. In others, such as with several major corporations in the wealthy Columbus suburb of Dublin, Ohio, the businesses are staying put while, at the companies’ behest, the suburb itself is being remade into a more walkable and urban place — a place with a “there,” to borrow Gertrude Stein’s famous phrase. In still other instances, entrepreneurs are choosing to set up shop in previously disinvested in-town neighborhoods.

Category Community Development, Demographics, Economic Development, Environment | Sustainability, Planning and Design1 CommentTags Kaid Benfield

April 20, 2015 | 10:40 am

Need a Better Story?
Get a better to-do list

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.

Category Community Development, Demographics, Public Engagement, Public Policy, ResilienceLeave a CommentTags Ben Brown, CNU 23, Edelman PR

March 16, 2015 | 12:01 am

‘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 keep picking away at the edges of problems, focusing on sub-issues that fit our predispositions and ignoring everything that complicates our perspectives.

Category Community Development, Demographics, Economic Development, Planning and Design1 CommentTags Ben Brown

February 23, 2015 | 8:40 am

Here’s to Zimmerman/Volk and to ‘Attainable Housing’

I should maybe feel at least a little guilty for escaping the cold weather in the North Carolina mountains where I live and heading to Florida over the weekend. But I don’t.

The destination was, after all, Panhandle Florida, the vertically challenged part of Florida that folks farther south call “LA,” as in “Lower Alabama.” Which means I was still wearing a down jacket when I ducked outside.

Also the trip was for a good cause. The occasion was the annual Seaside Prize Weekend, sponsored by the Seaside Institute.

Category Architecture, Community Development, Demographics, Experience, Financing, Planning and Design, Public Policy2 CommentsTags Ben Brown, Dhiru Thadani, Laurie Volk, Ray Gindroz, Seaside Florida, Seaside Institute, Seaside Prize, Todd Zimmerman

January 19, 2015 | 9:13 am

Small to Go Big in 2015?
Maybe. Finally. Here’s why.

Those of us who’ve been tangling with status quo protectors in housing design and policymaking got a charge out of Justin Shubow’s Forbes blog post earlier this month. Shubow backhanded modernist starchitects for persisting in their personal artistic vision without regard to the human use of real places:

“Modernism might appear outwardly impregnable: it dominates the practitioners, the critics, the media, and the schools. But as the example of the Soviet Union shows, even the strongest-appearing edifice can suddenly come crashing down when it turns out it no longer has internal support.”

Category Architecture, Community Development, Demographics, Development, Planning and Design, Transportation2 CommentsTags Academic Village, Ben Brown, Bruce Tolar, New Partners for Smart Growth, R Jon Anderson, Ross Chapin, Seaside, Serenbe

January 12, 2015 | 6:29 am

Talkin’ Right, Leanin’ Left: The ‘New Consurbanism’?

Here’s a quiz for you: What’s the “it” in these two quotes? And who’s talking?

It “is a radical, government-led re-engineering of society, one that artificially inverted millennia of accumulated wisdom . .”

It “offers conservatism a new venue, one where we can couple our desire for traditional culture and morals with a physical environment that supports both.”