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On The Role Of The Arts In Thriving Communities
Arcade Fire's highly acclaimed album "The Suburbs" provides one set of answers. From a review by Greg Kot in The Chicago Tribune:
"Band leader Win Butler and his younger brother Will grew up in the suburbs of Houston, a sun-baked sea of golf courses, shopping malls and utilitarian but largely anonymous houses. In other words, it could’ve been anywhere. That setting describes millions of childhoods, a vast, blank universality that Arcade Fire fills in with personal detail and a deep sense of longing.
"Though “suburbia” has long been shorthand for homogenized mediocrity in the arts, Win Butler and his bandmates don’t allow themselves to indulge in such easy, condescending dismissals. Instead they invest their upbringing with a mix of fondness and regret, wistfulness and disappointment, and that tension is nurtured by music that is among the richest, subtlest and most unsettling of the band’s career."
See http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/turn_it_up/2010/07/album-review-arcade-fire-the-suburbs.html.
On The North Carolina Senate's Big Brother Zoning Act
In my view the sorry history of sprawling land use in the US is ample testimony to the abject failure of local control to address what are frequently regional issues. Our system of highly fragmented land use control - especially in suburban municipalities - is a major contributor to economic, social, and environmental harm. Regional authority over local governments might be better than state control but, given a choice between continuing to trust local governments to get it right and trusting the state, I'll take the state.
I like the way California is moving with SB 375 - regional planning agencies set the broad outlines within which municipalities must operate; the munis may then construct local plans and decisions but must conform to the regional frameworks. And the state must certify that the regional frameworks are sufficient to meet assigned carbon-reduction targets. And as you probably know, new urbanists affiliated with CNU are closely involved with the regional planning.
This is roughly comparable to the situation in Ontario, where the province, working with locals, has constructed an enforceable land use plan for a New Hampshire-sized region including Toronto and Hamilton. If the munis do not adopt rules consistent with the regional plan, the province can step in and enforce it. Peter Calthorpe and I have both called it the best land-use plan on the continent.
I don't know the details of the NC law, but the overall concept of regional, state or provincial authority over land use isn't bizarre, but rather the way that most countries in the world - including some with much more sustainable and urbanist patterns of land use than ours - do it. I'm surprised to see CNU defend the current arrangement, when our movement is supposed to be about change.
On Can You Trademark the Urban Self-Sufficiency Movement?
Federal trademark law prohibits the use of properly registered trade and service marks in commerce when the marks are used by a nonregistrant to describe goods and services falling into the categories for which the marks are registered and being used by the registrant. It does not prohibit the use of the marks in general speech or for other purposes. For example, "Enterprise" is a registered trademark for car rental services. That does not prohibit Enterprise Community Partners from using the word to describe their business of support for affordable housing, nor does it prohibit you or me from writing a book with "enterprise" in the title to discuss other types of businesses or activities. Where there is little to no likelihood that there would be consumer confusion as to the context in which a word or phrase is being used, people should not allow themselves to be bullied by aggressive scare tactics.
In addition, if the trade or service mark was issued too broadly, e.g., for activities beyond those actively being pursued in commerce by the registrant, it can be challenged in court.
On Because you can’t plan everything
I suppose this is picking a nit, but "the best laid plans o' mice an' men gang aft agley" was written by Robert Burns in the late 18th century. Steinbeck borrowed from it for his book title.
On NatGeo surveys countries’ transit use: guess who comes in last
The detailed report makes clear that the survey is of walking to daily-life-type destinations such as shops, schools, jobs, and services. Land use plays a huge role in that, as other research confirms. In the US, we have more single-use land tracts, lower densities, fewer sidewalks in many cases, and more disconnected streets. It's probably not realistic for the US to achieve European levels of performance, but surely we can match Canada with better land use and transportation planning.
We also tend not to exercise much when we don't have to. Obesity rates are higher in more automobile-dependent subdivisions than in walkable, more urban neighborhoods.
On Is placemaking a "new environmentalism"?
Tyler, if you have 15 seconds in an elevator to describe the outcome you want at the neighborhood scale, what vocabulary do you use? I certainly agree that placemaking isn't perfect, but neither is smart growth, sustainability, green development or even walkability. We frequently don't have the opportunity to speak in paragraphs, so what's the shorthand version? We all need better answers to this.