This week my family enthusiastically celebrates both Canada Day and Independence Day, wishing Canada a happy 145th birthday, and the US a happy 236th. We honor the effective portions of the collective community vision that made these two nations great! The oldest continuously occupied settlements in each country are St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador, at 429 years, and Acoma and Taos Pueblos, both in New Mexico, at 1,012 years.
July 2, 2012 | 3:02 am
Community-Based Economic Development
June 4, 2012 | 12:01 am
The Passion of Place
David Byrne noted in last Sunday’s NY Times that people get hooked on cycling because of pleasure, not health, money, or carbon footprint. “Emotional gratification trumps reason.”
Ben Brown agrees, using Byrne’s “Stop Making Sense” as a blog title on the subject of community engagement and how special interest groups often talk past each other. “Intuition comes first, strategic reasoning second.”
April 9, 2012 | 9:55 am
Why Generation Y is Causing the Great Migration of the 21st Century
Just after the close of World War II, the last Great Migration in the United States — the move from the city to the new suburbs — began to emerge, fueled by new roads, low congestion, and modest energy costs. It was a new beginning, a chance to shake off the past, and it came complete with the promise of more privacy, more safety, and easier financing.
Not surprisingly, Americans bought in.
After that, it didn’t take long for the preferred retailers to do likewise, abandoning the city and following their customers to the suburbs. The suburban single family home on a large lot became synonymous with the American Dream.
June 10, 2011 | 7:57 am
CNU 19: The Uprising
Like my anniversary, family birthdays and selected holidays, the Congress for the New Urbanism is an annual ceremony that I faithfully attend. My lovely wife would confirm that I never question the necessary time and money spent to participate in the congresses. And, as expected, I thoroughly enjoyed my time at CNU 19 in Madison, Wisconsin, even though I had to leave a couple days in…
January 11, 2011 | 12:01 am
An Ode to Old Towns
PlaceShakers takes a very literal step off our comfortably beaten paths of urban design, zoning reform and community resiliency today to focus on, as the software industry calls it, the “end-user experience.” Despite, or perhaps because of, having no vocational connection to placemaking at all, explorer / spelunker / observer John Watts offers up some poignant reminders of why our work towards endearing — and enduring — human-scaled places is so important. For today, certainly, but ultimately for tomorrow.
