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Resilience

February 3, 2012 | 12:01 am

Punk Rock and the New Urbanism: Getting back to basics

By the early to mid 1970s, something was wrong with rock and roll.

It no longer fought the system. Worse than that, it had become the system. Bloated. Detached. Pretentious.

Performer and audience, once fused in a mutual quest to stick it to the man, now existed on separate planes — an increasingly complacent generation sucked into the service of pomp and circumstance. And the shared experience of joyful rebellion? Replaced by pompous, weed-soaked, middle-earth mysticism.

Rock and roll needed to get back to basics. What country pioneer Harlan Howard characterized as “three chords and the truth.” Enter punk rock.

Category Development, Planning and Design, Public Policy, Resilience27 CommentsTags affordable housing, aging in place, Bob Gibbs, Bruce Tolar, Charles Marohn, charrette, Chuck Marohn, cottage living, cottage square, cottages, Easton Town Center, greenfield TND, Ian Mackaye, incubator retail, Joe Strummer, Joey Ramone, katrina cottage, Led Zeppelin, Principles of Urban Retail, punk rock, retail consultant, roundabouts, Santana Row, Scott Doyon, Strong Towns, town center, workforce housing, Yes

January 13, 2012 | 12:01 am

Rolling with Ever-Changing Gas Prices: Lessons from my dumb luck

The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Op-Ed pages took on the subject of gas prices this week, devoting a good fifty column inches to a discussion that could otherwise be summarized like this:

The price of gas might increase by anywhere from a few pennies to a dollar this year. It might also go down, but then it will go up again. And, amidst the fluctuations, expect the ongoing trend of slowly increasing average costs to continue. So we’re right to be concerned.

Category Planning and Design, Public Policy, Resilience10 CommentsTags AAA, Atlanta Journal Constitution, gas, gas prices, Jessica Brady, Scott Doyon

December 23, 2011 | 12:01 am

Retail: When it bends the rules and breaks the law.

Getting ready for a TEDx talk in a few weeks, I’ve once again been noticing how the places that I love the most usually break the law. The contemporary development codes and bylaws, that is, which are geared to the car, not to the pedestrian and cyclist.

Then last week’s urban retail SmartCode tweetchat with Bob Gibbs sparked a debate about the rules of thumb that govern the success or failure of the most risky development of all: retail. And when those rules might be bent by certain special circumstances.

Ready to geek out with me for a moment?

Category Agriculture, Architecture, Development, Economic Development, Planning and Design, Public Policy, Resilience15 CommentsTags Bob Gibbs, form-based code, Gibbs Planning, Hazel Borys, Newton's Laws, Principles of Urban Retail, quantum physics, retail, Seth Harry, smartcode, urbanism

December 2, 2011 | 12:01 am

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 severed by the meandering disconnection of subdivisions and strip malls or was sprawl just a symptom of something larger? After all, for all their rewards, meaningful relationships take a lot of work. Perhaps, once the modern world elevated our prospects for personal independence, we cut those ties ourselves, willingly, lest our happy motoring be weighted down with excess baggage.

Sprawl: form following function.

Category Public Policy, Resilience17 CommentsTags Alexis de Tocqueville, Better Together, Bowling Alone, climate change, community, Decatur Georgia, global finance, global warming, John Michael Greer, Odd Fellows, peak oil, Resilience, Robert Putnam, Scott Doyon, The Long Descent

November 11, 2011 | 12:34 am

Poggibonsi 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 the most beautiful land I’ve ever seen. Staying in a vineyard outside of Poggibonsi, waking up to the resident rooster, and walking medieval streets was cleansing for the mind and spirit. Even the parking lots are frequently overseen by amazing art, like this copy of Michelangelo’s David on the hill overlooking Florence.

Category Agriculture, Architecture, Development, Planning and Design, Public Policy, Resilience1 CommentTags Hazel Borys, Leonardo da Vinci, lessons from great cities, lessons from livable places, Poggibonsi, Tuscany, urbanism

October 14, 2011 | 8:19 am

Resources + 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 to the economic bottom trying to incentivize jobs. It’s led to jobs being all about giving away resources, and not so much about the value of connections.

Category Development, Planning and Design, Public Policy, Resilience1 CommentTags creative class, economic development, Exchange District, Hazel Borys, Paul Simon, placemaking, resiliency, Winnipeg

September 30, 2011 | 12:01 am

Can Preservationists Let Love Rule?

Call me naive.

When I was first exposed to the New Urbanism in the 1990s, it was as a 9 to 5 ad-man with an appreciation for music and art. Killing time one day in my dentist’s waiting room, I stumbled upon “Bye-Bye Suburban Dream,” the cover story of the latest Newsweek magazine.

I still remember the feeling I had as I read it. Unbelievable, I thought. This is a movement creating places where people, community, beauty and culture are once again prioritized. Where the interconnected everyday human experiences that color our lives are valued. Where commerce and art can both thrive.

Category Architecture, Development, Legal, Planning and Design, Resilience6 CommentsTags 50-year rule, Avondale Estates, George Willis, historic preservation, new urbanism, Scott Doyon, Stratford-Upon-Avon

June 17, 2011 | 12:11 am

The Allure of Food: It’s not just a lifestyle. It’s a life.

All the recent talk of Agrarian Urbanism has sent me down a tangential thought process. The difference between life and lifestyle. Lifestyle has come to mean how we spend our money on the weekends – or maybe squeeze in after work – before we get back to the grind. Things that often have more to do with entertainment than community. Over the last 50 years or so, shopping and golf have become central national pastimes.

What if, instead, life became a little more organic again?

Category Agriculture, Economic Development, Planning and Design, Resilience11 CommentsTags Ag Urb, Agrarian Urbanism, Agriculatural Urbanism, Andres Duany, Hazel Borys

May 6, 2011 | 12:01 am

Form-Based Codes? A picture’s worth a thousand words.

If the attendees list of Placemaking@Work, my monthly webinar series, is any indicator, we’re increasingly united in our desire to improve the places we call home, wherever those places might be. Last month, I had participants from Hawaii to Russia, from British Columbia to Saudi Arabia, and many points in between.

The common thread among these seekers is their search for tools and tactics that have proven effective. And increasingly dominating these conversations are form-based codes.

Category Development, Legal, Planning and Design, Public Policy, Resilience4 CommentsTags Hazel Borys, Home from Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler, Placemaking@Work, smartcode, sprawl, Steve Mouzon

April 15, 2011 | 9:00 am

“Sustainability” is so ten years ago — Let’s talk “Resilience”

Deep in an April 14 New York Times story on the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami was mention of an iPhone app called Yurekuru that gives warning of an impending quake. The name, said the Times, translates into English roughly as, “the shaking is coming.”

Before the March 11 quake, the app attracted 100,000 users. Now: 1.5 million.

In a sense, living organisms could always be fairly certain that a shaking of some kind was on the way. Life on earth has been shaped by violence, by sudden upheavals and reversals of fortune for one hapless population or another. Foreboding is written into the human psyche. It’s only recently that we’ve felt entitled to be spared.

Category Public Policy, Resilience4 CommentsTags Ben Brown, Coastal Alabama, Resilience, sustainability, Yurekuru

Punk Rock and the New Urbanism: Getting back to basics

Rolling with Ever-Changing Gas Prices: Lessons from my dumb luck

Retail: When it bends the rules and breaks the law.

Resilience: It’s who ya know.

Poggibonsi and other Tuscan Lessons

Resources + Connections = Jobs

Can Preservationists Let Love Rule?

The Allure of Food: It’s not just a lifestyle. It’s a life.

Form-Based Codes? A picture’s worth a thousand words.

“Sustainability” is so ten years ago — Let’s talk “Resilience”

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