As placemakers, we know that the challenges of the built environment require more than just new ideas — no matter how clever, unique or seemingly innovative. That was the approach of the 20th century and — no spoiler alert required — it didn’t work out all that well. In retrospect, we know now that the ideas of the modernist revolution in planning were too closely tied to a particular wish list for how we’d like the world to work, rather than reflecting the complexity of who we really are — from our natural instincts and behaviors to the inconvenient links between how we connect, live together in community and, ultimately, survive for the long haul.
November 17, 2014 | 12:01 am
Selling Urbanism: Don’t be an Aristarchus
October 10, 2014 | 12:00 am
Placemaking: Preserve, repair, intensify
Placemaking often comes down to preserving, repairing, or intensifying urban or rural landscapes with public spaces at the heart of each neighborhood. Creative placemaking can take that to another level, helping to tease out the character of a place and celebrate it in an unusually insightful and invigorating way. A way that reaches deeper into the culture and adds nuance to the ways we gather. Tonight, I went to an art opening that I found particularly consoling and uplifting. In conversation, the artist pointed out: Continue Reading
July 17, 2014 | 12:44 am
Little Free Winnipeg Libraries
Enjoying the multiple conversations that Monday’s piece started about Little Free Libraries, I can’t help but share the two that our family has been enjoying this summer. In doing so, there’s a striking difference between the development pattern of Monday’s neighbourhood in Kansas versus this 100-year-old Winnipeg neighbourhood in which I live. Do those development patterns have anything to do with the vastly different public responses that these libraries have received? Maybe not, but it’s an interesting contemplation.
July 7, 2014 | 12:01 am
Celebrating Public Art: Chicago in the summer
A recent trip to Chicago on the first weekend of summer reinforced the importance of great public art. After a particularly harsh winter, the welcoming parks, squares, and plazas of the city were burgeoning with people soaking in the sunshine.
Coming home to talk with my husband, who happens to be an art museum director, we had some interesting conversations about the differences between civic art and public art. For my husband, there really is no difference, however in my industry, there is.
May 12, 2014 | 7:29 am
Tea Party Taps Hippie Wisdom: How’s that working out?
So I’m sitting in one of those community meetings we’ve all become familiar with of late. A local Tea Party type is making a passionate pitch for what his group considers Constitutional guarantees against government planning, and I get this deju vu tug.
I’ve been here before. I’VE BEEN THIS BEFORE.
February 17, 2014 | 12:01 am
Getting Stuff Done: The whole point of planning, no?
High on my list of must-read columnists is James Surowiecki of The New Yorker. His “Twilight of the Brands” piece in the February 17-24 edition provides a good example of how he takes apart outworn axioms of business success, then, from the wreckage, assembles a model better suited for the here and now.
August 5, 2013 | 12:01 am
Old School Strategies for Connectivity (Hint: Batteries not required)
For years, I’ve been jotting down inverse relationships as they crop up in my professional and personal life. Here, for instance, is one from my previous career as a journalist:
The quality of reporting at any event is inversely proportional to the number of reporters covering it. Think Super Bowls, political conventions and the birth of a royal baby.
And here’s one closer to home for those of us making our livings in community planning and development: The chances for achieving meaningful results for a controversial project are inversely proportional to the degree to which the client expects help from web-enabled social networking.
August 1, 2013 | 12:01 am
Sustainability: What’s in a word?
The places we inhabit are rarely if ever arbitrary. They’re the products of intention. Personal. Economic. Environmental. Religious. We choose for ourselves, individually and collectively, the kind of places we want and — through leadership, policy, investment, advocacy, action and, at times, inaction — those places begin to take form.
It’s a complicated dance of complementary and competing interests. Making it something that happens for us, rather than something that happens to us, requires, perhaps more than anything, a shared understanding of exactly what it is we’re talking about. A common language.
June 20, 2013 | 12:01 am
Zoning Our Way to HOA Insanity
I’m big on local. Not because I hate Walmart and 3,000 mile Caesar salads but because, as I see it, communities built on human-scaled, interdependent systems are better suited to taking on the challenges and opportunities presented by time.
That’s why, when it comes to the decisions that most directly impact day-to-day quality of life, I tend to advocate for smaller, more local, more responsive increments of control. Things like neighborhoods, NPUs, districts, and towns.
The world around us, whatever form it takes, comes to reflect the priorities of the people setting policy, making rules, and allocating funds. The more those people understand the nuances of context and maintain a shared stake in the outcome, the better things tend to be.
Sort of.
May 20, 2013 | 12:01 am
Comp Planning Off the Beaten Path
I tend to take the road less traveled.
For whatever reason, conventional approaches have never interested me. And the process I came up with for my city’s comp plan was no different.
Why? Well, first off, conventionalism leads to….. “BORING!” (Yell it out like no one can hear you!)
