Posts Tagged ‘retrofitting suburbia’
[Holiday Leftovers] Confessions of a Former Sprawl Addict: Speed Humps on the Road to Recovery
[Originally run Sept. 17, 2010] Hi. I’m Hazel and I was a Sprawlaholic. If you’ve been reading awhile you may recall that, with the loving help of my friends and family, I went cold turkey, dumping life in a Florida subdivision for the intense urban charms of downtown Winnipeg. It was a life-changing move with…
Read MoreHealthy, or Unhealthy, by Design
A few months ago, we talked about how a great city can be like a great running buddy, calling us to venture outdoors into more active, satisfying lifestyles. The photo-essay accompanying that conversation was on the urbanity of Wilmington, North Carolina. Last week, we were in another North Carolina town, Fuquay-Varina, working to create just…
Read MoreToday’s “Eco-Warriors”: Giving Them Something Worth Fighting For
This week I’d like to share a few thoughts on infill and sustainability that coalesced while preparing this week for another Pecha Kucha presentation on Retrofitting Suburbia. I’ll begin with a little background. My daughter came home from her International Baccalaureate Elementary School with a new sticker in her daily planner proclaiming her an “Eco-Warrior!”
Read MoreRetail Redemption: Skivvies Uncovered, then Promptly Covered
A couple months ago I rambled on here about my inability to purchase a particularly critical item of men’s apparel during an extended tour of new urban projects throughout the southeast. Modesty was not my problem. Rather, despite healthy commercial activity most everywhere I went, I could find no walkable stores catering to such day-to-day…
Read MoreFat-tastic! Can Small Thinking Solve Our Super-Sized Problems?
According to a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — more commonly known for crunching global budget and employment numbers — the United States is on track to be 75% obese by 2020. 3 out of every 4. And if you check with researchers at Johns Hopkins University, they’ll tell you…
Read MoreThe Suburbs: Arcade Fire, Childhood Memory, and the Future of Growth
I’m in my 40s. I grew up in the suburbs. It was awesome. And then it wasn’t. Never before and, perhaps, never again will there be as efficient and reliable a machine for manufacturing idealized childhood memories. The suburbs of the 60s and 70s, maybe even the 80s, were like some sort of paradise.
Read MoreBack to the Farm (And to the Bunker)
Just when reporters were beginning to buy into the hopefulness of “sprawl repair” and “ag is the new golf,” Andres Duany trips them up with visions of the dark side. Or at least the really hard side, as in the hard work ahead if we’re to reverse the direction of 20th century excesses. “Our wealth…
Read More18th New Urbanist Congress: Best Ever?
What’s constitutes “best ever” depends on the takeaways, right? And when it comes to conferences, we could be talking takeaways that aren’t products of the event itself. Like maybe you got a job or connected with a soul mate. Let’s call that the upside of unintended consequences.
Read MoreHeaven Help Us: Ambitious Project Both Reaffirms, Tests Faith in Sustainable Future
I was a post-Vatican II, suburban Catholic. For anyone of shared experience, that typically meant attending a church that was designed and built to serve the rapidly growing, happy motoring suburban leisure class. Equal parts woody earth tones and ample parking, it was a transient testament to our nation’s awkward adolescence: a monolithic UFO of…
Read MoreWhat We’re Reading: Retrofitting Suburbia
Considerable attention has been paid to development in urban cores and new neighborhoods on the exurban periphery. But in between, the out-of-date and unsustainable developments in existing suburbs also provide enormous opportunities for regeneration. Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, by Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson, is a comprehensive guidebook that illustrates how…
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