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With an ‘urban diary,’ everyone’s a city planner
Each of us sees the city from a slightly different angle. By capturing the perceptions of city dwellers, decision makers will be better equipped to plan cities and respond to urban change.We may inhabit the same city, but we live in different worlds. Each of us sees our city from a slightly different angle, the view filtered through lenses of race, class, and circumstance. Even when we encounter the same scene, we experience it differently. Consider this: for a young professional in...Read more -
The new urban Christian connection: A Detroit networking invitation
CNU has a vital toolkit that Christian community workers badly need to provide solutions to the problems they face in cities and neighborhoods.I’m not ashamed to admit it. I love CNU, warts and all—the people, the charter, the commitment, the restless pushing of intellectual and professional boundaries as we square up to changing realities and new challenges. We’re a scrappy bunch. I like that. But we have heart too. Real places have a...Read more -
A gift of nature and architecture
Park Van Ness has remarkable details—and opens up a view from a major thoroughfare to a major urban park.This beautiful Art Deco building is a striking addition to a major urban thoroughfare, terminating a vista at the end of a cross street with a grand, two-story archway that leads into a 5,000-square-foot public plaza overlooking an important urban park in DC. It's not often that a building like...Read more -
Genuine change or lipstick on a pig?
A well-known new urban project has begun to reshape the relentless sprawl around it, but communities shouldn't wait for that to happen.A criticism of Silicon Valley planning, housing, and community culture led to a critique last week of Santana Row , a prominent new urbanist development in San Jose, California. Santana Row is better than the usual Silicon Valley sprawl, but does it represent real progress—or is it merely dressing...Read more