Posts Tagged ‘Scott Doyon’
Smart Growth = Smart Parenting, Part Two
I’m a parent so, not surprisingly, I’m always on the lookout for intersections between that and my work in community design. The last time I considered the issue, I was thinking at the level of the neighborhood and exploring how walkable, mixed-use, mixed-product environments help parents combat a host of contemporary child-rearing ills. That post…
Read MoreThe goal is not engagement. It’s disengagement.
Having worked in communities big and small across the continent, we’ve had ample opportunity to test ideas and find approaches that work best. Urban design details. Outreach tactics. Implementation tricks. Many of these lessons are transferable, which is why we’ve created “Back of the Envelope,” a weekly feature where we jot ’em down for your…
Read MorePunk 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…
Read MoreRolling 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…
Read MoreResilience: 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 MoreCan 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…
Read MorePopsicles and the Importance of Simplicity
Back in June, I wrote a piece about how, compared to sprawl, smart growth produces places better suited to raising children. The overall takeaway was simple: When kids are able to navigate the world around them, manage conflicts, make decisions, screw up and recover, they’re better off for it. And place is a big contributor…
Read MoreNIMBY Nation: Mad as hell and I don’t blame ‘em. For now.
You know, I gotta give NIMBYs their due. In many instances, their tireless efforts have kept the world from becoming a worse place, and that’s no small feat. But, sadly, it’s not their only accomplishment. They’ve also kept the world from becoming a better place. Welcome to the problem with NIMBYs. Their reactionary nature can’t…
Read MoreSmart Growth = Smart Parenting
Put the village on hold. For the time being, it’s gonna take a parent, a councilman and a developer to raise a child. Flashback 2003: Attending the New Partners for Smart Growth conference in New Orleans, I caught the keynote from a planning official for Vancouver, British Columbia. Now, under normal circumstances, I don’t suppose…
Read MoreThe Future of Planning: Going meta
“In a world where the peddlers of invention dominate progressive discourse, a willingness to acknowledge–let alone heed–the lessons of history and tradition is a truly radical act.” –Scott Doyon Check the wiki-hip Urban Dictionary (or watch an episode of Community on NBC) and you’ll find the term meta’s common usage on the street is “to characterize…
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