Enjoying the multiple conversations that Monday’s piece started about Little Free Libraries, I can’t help but share the two that our family has been enjoying this summer. In doing so, there’s a striking difference between the development pattern of Monday’s neighbourhood in Kansas versus this 100-year-old Winnipeg neighbourhood in which I live. Do those development patterns have anything to do with the vastly different public responses that these libraries have received? Maybe not, but it’s an interesting contemplation.
July 17, 2014 | 12:44 am
Little Free Winnipeg Libraries
November 18, 2013 | 7:30 pm
Richard Florida on Technology, Talent, and Tolerance
Last Friday, I attended an inspiring Richard Florida luncheon put on by the Winnipeg Chamber, and can’t resist sharing the high points with you.
Technology, talent and tolerance are essential to fostering creative cultures. When we talk about the creative class, we aren’t talking about some rarified, exclusive group of people. Every human is creative. Creative cultures stoke that fire.
October 1, 2012 | 1:32 am
Ode to Summer Cycling: Winnipeg insights from the trails
As summer wraps up, I’m feeling grateful for the investment of my city and those I’ve visited this season to make getting around on a bike a more pleasant and productive experience. While we still have some significant cycling infrastructure gaps to fill on this continent, we’ve come a long way. This blog’s video is homage to Winnipeg’s advances in the five summers I’ve lived here.
July 19, 2012 | 6:35 am
Façade-ectomy: Preserving the skin of the past
Experiencing the most recent façade-ectomy in Winnipeg has left me asking again the much-debated question of the validity of preserving just the façade of a building.
A façade-ecotomy will likely:
- Lose historic, cultural, architectural significance
- Waste embodied energy
- Increase cost of construction over full demolition
- Increase tax revenues over doing nothing
- Decrease long term viability of new construction
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.
July 15, 2011 | 8:12 am
Like Butterflies to the Garden: The case for urban biking
I can’t remember a summer that I’ve found such satisfaction in simple pleasures as I have this season. Maybe it’s because this is my forth summer as a Canadian resident — a country that proudly dominates winter and passionately embraces summer. Or maybe it’s because the sobering events of late on many fronts have reinforced the importance of small blessings.
