Going Viral, but Not in a Good Way

Hello, you in the hazmat suit. Can we talk? Though no one can authoritatively predict, from an epidemiology perspective, what will happen next, Ebola reached new levels of infection in the body politic last week. Republicans and Democrats seem pretty sure they’ve identified likely sources of toxicity. And it should come as no surprise that…

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Measure Local, Share Global, Part 2: From app to main course

Talk about geek love! When I wrote recently about having cooked up an iPhone app for collecting the physical metrics behind form-based codes, my intentions were pretty modest. First, I was just kind of giddy over how it was coming together and wanted to talk about it. But second, and more importantly, I wanted to…

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Dancing with Urban Agriculture

My lovely wife of eight years enjoys really bad television. For better or worse, last night she tricked me into watching a segment of ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ Coyly, she asked me to name the movies in which the dancing ‘star’ had ‘starred’. Having no idea and starting my way back upstairs, I heard her…

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Today’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!”

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Back 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…

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Everything’s Connected: Health, Healthy Aging, Community Design

Among the most encouraging trends in Smart Growth is an emerging consensus that good community design can address a bunch of issues at once. Which makes for much more comprehensive, cost-effective strategies to match the complexity of challenges before policy-makers. Take, for instance, the agendas of separate entities concentrating exclusively on topics such as public…

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DPZ Promotes Mall Makeovers

Firm Suggests Model Legislation in Florida Will Florida put the “suburban retrofitting” movement on the fast track? Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. (DPZ) is providing state officials with a legislative template to do just that. On April 20, the Miami-based design and planning firm submitted to Florida’s Division of Community Assistance a suggested draft for a State…

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