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Reflections on Downtown Greensboro as Community Looks at Its Future
On Tuesday April 30, I spent a good bit of time thinking about downtown with a bunch of dignitaries and fellow young leaders. Our civic foundations brought back Richard Flierl of Cooper Carry, The Center for Connective Architecture, who helped the...
The Creative Class: Off the Record and On the Money
Recently, I was chillin’ with some DC artists who were visiting Elsewhere, one of my favorite creative spaces here in Greensboro. Many of the people, who live in a very culturally rich city, had been waiting years for the opportunity to go down and...
Everything I Learned about Place, I Learned on Campus
During my time on campus, placemaking became more than a fantasy. It was ingrained. Let’s be honest here; if we think about how much we walked, shared things, and did all of our major business within a small set of buildings and blocks, we should...
The Case for a Lazy Urbanism: Connecting to Place
I need to be honest. Sometimes I don’t want to write this blog anymore. Yes, I’m in love with the city and the greater sense of place found in all forms of natural and unnatural terrain. However, we all know that just because we love something,...
What If The City Doesn’t Want You Anymore?
A study of urban political systems is a study in the history of cities spitting out or sectioning off their least desirables, namely lower class and people of color of any class. First, it was the gentry of the streetcar era that found they could...
Finding Happiness in the “Generic” City
So I was looking for jobs about six months ago and I came upon my current position through my network of grad school friends. On paper I knew I had what it takes to get the job. I also knew that this was a job that I could grow into and also be...
Prioritizing Human Transport, Outside Of The Box
A human is not a box. However, we still prefer to transport ourselves as such. Then again, we do live in a world, namely in the United States, where corporations are people and those “people” often make things that come in boxes.Yet, we are failing...
The Real Failure of the Creative Class Is the Fear of Failure
Seeing Richard Florida speak at CNU 20 last month, all I could think about was one thing and one thing only:He rated Greensboro, which in addition to being my current city is my hometown, 41 of 49 in his original list of large creative class cities....
Five Ways Government Workers and Officials Are Master Placemakers
On Memorial Day, we celebrate the sacrifice of the many men and women of our Armed Forces that have passed on either in battle or having lived a full civilian life. My PaPa was a World War II veteran and his presence was missed as we gathered around...
Design Can’t Save Us, but We Can Save Through Design. A #CNU20 Reflection
It’s been roughly 48 hours since the last session at CNU 20 and I’ve been home about 24 of those hours with a sore throat and bruised heels from all the great debates, ideas, dances, food and fellowship that I encountered at the Congress.There were...
The Urban Hierarchy is Really Dead
The urbanist blogosphere has been on fire again over this idea of an urban hierarchy . I love Aaron Renn’s commentary as a whole he’s traditionally highlighted small cities. I also believe that he’s only digging deeper into what others have already...
Five Ways to Kill the Inferiority Complex in Community Building
I think a major layer of community building is the inferiority complex. I’m seeing it again as we are preparing to welcome Trader Joes into our community. We spend too much time thinking we need to spend money on expensive stadiums and art centers...
