Category Archives: Brooklyn

Atlanta, Brooklyn, Cities, Cityreads, Cleveland, creative placemaking, DC, Durham, Government, Greensboro, Housing, Links, miami, Rail, Raleigh

Placebook: The Little Blue Walking Dot

U.S. Cities that walk the most. Image via Governing and Fast Company.

Hey Hey, it’s Friday! And with that, I’m looking forward to a quiet evening of sewing at home with my mom and a Saturday and Sunday filled with who knows what else? In the meantime, I know at least one day of this weekend I’ll be a part of Greensboro’s blue dot from the map above. But before that, here are some articles to take you through the weekend:

The polar vortex is not keeping folks from riding bike share bikes, at least not in DC. Meanwhile, Downtown Miami will finally see the DecoBike stations that have been operating in Miami Beach.

More affordable housing struggles, also in DC. Evictions are still hurting communities of color and poverty nationwide.

The Project for Public Spaces has great thoughts on how folk art influences placemaking. I saw this first hand while I was on the trip that made me a placeist back in 2012.

The fallacy of having too many municipalities in a small land area, illustrated by Cincinnati and surrounding Hamilton County, Ohio. Meanwhile, Cleveland is touting itself as the next Brooklyn.

It’s always sad when a beautiful building falls into disrepair and is then threatened with demolition, this time in the Bronx. More modern buildings in good shape that have won awards are also not safe from demo in NYC.

The RTP region is growing period. Greensboro has potential growth in HondaJet, a new microbrewery,plus a new ordinance that could allow more microbreweries.

New BART cars in the Bay Area and a slew of new transportation projects in DC.  2.7 million trips were taken on transit in the U.S. in the third quarter of 2013.

Get to know the Metro Atlanta Equity Atlas, the first equity-based data-cruncher and map maker in the Southeast that’s user-friendly and free and open to the public.

And finally, a post-mortem on Bridgegate and why calling the police is not always the best step when dealing with mentally ill family and friends.

And because it’s the weekend, sit back and enjoy DC-based short fiction from the Washington City Paper‘s 2nd annual fiction issue.

apartment living, Brooklyn, Food, Greensboro, Issues and Ideas, Things At a Place

Identifying Real Place Inferiority

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Ambulance Chaser

Upon opening my inbox and my social media streams on a recent morning, I was met with this article. In the article, published by the News & Record and written by a fellow blogger Michael Turner, laments the lack of an identity that we have here in Greensboro.

He has some good things to say, but the real problem is not that we don’t have an identity, the problem is that we feel like we are lesser than someone else when it comes to our city. I’ve said this before and I will say it again-ALL CITIES HAVE PROBLEMS. Not just cities, but towns, suburbs, farms and anything else that’s either incorporated and providing municipal services or working hard to make sure the cows come home from graze.

The problem of having no identity is nowhere near as bad as the problem of no heat, no water and no way of getting medical supplies and food. Thanks to Sandy,at least 7,000 people in New York are having that very problem. To cap it off, they still have rent due. Their landlord- the public housing authority. There are middle class people, including first responders, who are facing devastation they never thought they’d see. One minute, they are living the American Dream in the NYC area despite 9/11. The next minute, their home is gone. Do you think they care as much about the ideal and image of NYC or do they care about rebuilding their home or getting basic needs?

I’ve written articles here before about making the best of what you have and creating your own identity wherever you are. Yet, I say this not to force people to stay in unsafe(as in, you hear gunshots nightly and you have stuff stolen on a regular basis and someone’s been assaulted) conditions. I say this once again as I’ve said it before, that the message of place inferiority rings hollow when one has money and connections to make things better.

Please remember our fellow brothers and sisters who are still struggling to make that happen. Many are not lazy, most are just out of luck.

Image above courtesy of Flickr user Andreanna Moya Photography.

Brooklyn, Greensboro, Issues and Ideas, The Thursday List

The Thursday List: News and Views for the Week of May 21, 2012

I’ve wanted to do this for a while, but came up with all kinds of excuses. No more. Even if this is just a public way for me to clear my thoughts on a few articles that have come past my inbox, news feed and stream, then here it is.

However, before I launch in to everyone else’s news, here are my two shameless plugs for my latest post on when it’s ok to quit a city and my e-book on how to make things better. Thank you for supporting both endeavors. For those of you still scratching your heads on what all this means, subsequent editions of the book will introduce more concise definitions and straightforward action steps for your community. I’m not going to put a timeline, but do expect a bigger edition sometime before the end of this calendar year.

Now on to the news:

It’s really sad that going to school on a bike is grounds for suspension and in some cases jail. Many of us saw the Grist article, but it’s this Bicycling.com article that really drives the point home that something needs to be done. It also exposes how little people in the government sector want to collaborate. Holding a master of public administration, I know that in theory this is not the way things should be, but it’s the way we have chosen in recent years to get things done. Yet, I commend anyone who seeks to take public action who’s just a private citizen trying to do the right thing.

The Huffington Post yesterday highlighted just that. Aurash Khawarzad, who I had the pleasure of meeting at CNU 19 in Madison, is the focus of a wonderful article on Do Tank, the tactical urbanism organization and a new organization called Change Administration, which seeks to deal with gentrification by hipsters dead on. Like it or not, even some of the tactical projects can be disruptive to already existing community norms and rituals. However, that doesn’t have to happen. Khawarzad cites his neighborhood and surrounding areas in Brooklyn as examples of how diverse many of our communities are, but how we also have an obligation as privileged people to do what we can to help save communities. I hope to lend my support to this effort and similar ones across the country that are dealing with distressed areas.

Lastly, my home state continues to exhibit examples of my 12 Legit reasons to leave. Case in point, a man who after peacefully demonstrating his desire to not have a Confederate statue replaced in his town, this man’s tires on his business vehicle were destroyed and his car and business were also vandalized, with obscenities related to the president sprayed on them. The man is still pushing on, showing that sometimes, even when it’s past time to leave, you have to keep soldiering on.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend everyone. Be sure to follow me on Instagram and my soon to be revived Tumblr to explore the environment in my own eyes.