Public Policy
Resilience: It’s who ya know.
If there’s one thing the 20th century gave us, it’s the luxury of not needing each other. It so defines our culture that it’s physically embodied in our sprawling, disconnected landscapes. That alone begs a classic, chicken-n-egg question: Did the leisurely lure of the suburbs kill our sense of community? Were our social ties unwittingly…
Read MoreDo We (Still) Need Vancouver?
A few years ago Urban Guru Leon Krier asked this question — “Do we still need Vancouver?” — at CNU XVII Denver. In response, the Next Generation of New Urbanists invited then-new Vancouver planning director Brent Toderian to speak in favor of Vancouver, which is easy to do. For, since the fall of Hong Kong,…
Read MoreCollaboration’s Failing so it’s Back to Hypocrisy
It’s a sad day when you have to start rooting for liars and hypocrites. That thought occurred to me when I read the news of Congress’s likely axing of the budget for the Sustainable Communities Initiative. That’s the two-year-old program that attempted to pull together goals of three federal agencies — the Department of Housing…
Read MorePoggibonsi and other Tuscan Lessons
With all the angst over Italy this week, I’m in the mood to count some blessings. To elaborate on some assets. To look at the local marketplace. And to debunk a couple of frequent idealist notions about European urbanism often heard from North Americans. Last month, I was traveling in the Tuscan countryside, which is…
Read MoreMy Right Turn at the Intersection of Good Ideas
When things get tough, people start digging in ideologically, increasingly viewing the world through the lens of their own experiences to fortify their already entrenched positions. Yes, experience counts for a lot and, chances are, they do hold some piece of the larger solution. But as we’ve learned time and time again, things are never…
Read MoreResources + Connections = Jobs
Jobs come up in every community-building conversation these days. It’s making me go back to the start, to think it through. What created jobs in the first place? Division of Labor. Access to natural resources. Human settlement patterns: cross roads, rivers, oceans, eventually railroads and highways. In the last few decades, many cities have been racing…
Read MorePruitt-Igoe: More ego or opportunity for vocational penance?
The restoration of degraded, traumatized, and distressed communities has been a high priority for the Obama Administration. The EPA, HUD and DOT are all allocating revitalization funds for places as large as Detroit and Cleveland, and as small as Ranson, West Virginia. That’s the kind of solid support needed at the big picture level, where…
Read MoreSpecial Districts Getting All Mixed Up
Recently there’ve been rumblings of a very interesting trend among cities that have adopted form-based codes to guide the character of their neighbourhoods. That is, once a city begins to think urbanistically, they start to solve some really hard problems. And those problems lately have been to do with industrial uses, and how to reconnect…
Read MoreAfter the Flood: Hard choices for communities and citizens
Virginia Republican Eric Cantor, majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, caught a lot of grief for suggesting there should be budget cuts elsewhere to offset the extra federal dollars that FEMA needed to do its job as tornadoes, floods and winds assaulted the eastern U.S. But at least he was being consistent as…
Read MoreExtreme Makeover: Zoning Edition
Want to get some sleep tonight? How about snuggling up with your local Development Code? Read any section, such as Sign Violations and Enforcement Procedures, and I’m willing to bet you’ll be out before you get past the Statement of Purpose. That’s a problem, because such volumes don’t exist to cure insomnia. They exist to…
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