Category: Advocacy

  • Community

      In the rather sobering article on urban planning that Alex shared in a recent post, there was an intriguing comment about the nature of “community.” The commenter (Blake Chastain) really put into words the uneasy feeling I occasionally have about community-based planning. “Communities are exclusionary; they may seek to be inclusive, but to some extent…

  • WWMLKJrD?

      Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, so firstly, huzzah! to all of you who are taking this opportunity to participate in a day of service in honor of his legacy. Secondly, today of all days seems to be a good moment to reflect on the racial diversity (or lack there of) in the…

  • The Ethics of Visualization

      Columbia University Libraries held this event recently, and while I missed the event, I was really happy they posted the video of it. Planners can often be creators of visualizations, but the ethics of visualizations is something not often discussed formally or academically, so I found this pretty interesting. Chris Alen Sula who presents…

  • A couple thoughts to start the week

      Sandy threw off the planned posts I was going to write over the past month, so thought I would compile a couple shorter thoughts for sharing today… Designing for the Deaf Some of you may recall that a while ago Gallaudet (a Washington, DC based school for the deaf)  came up with some design guidelines for the deaf. There was…

  • Community Organizing Tools

      Hello, Monday! I thought it might be nice to start this week with an optimistic look at citizen involvement in planning, so here are a couple things to check out… For those of you who want in-depth information on making your communities better, MAS has an upcoming Livable Neighborhoods Training day on September 22 at Pratt Institute…

  • What does a library say about its community?

      In a previous post I wrote about an upcoming book and event series that discusses open spaces and what the Occupy Wall Street Movement has taught us about the utilization of spaces during times of protest. Whether one agrees with the politics of the movement or not, there are many potential lessons learned from…