While perusing the January issue of Yankee Magazine, I noticed an article on the impact of the in-migration of city folk into Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. For those of you who don’t know, the NEK is one of the most remote, isolated, and impoverished areas of Vermont. The article by Ben...
We Have Opinions On: New Technology for the New Year
On December 21st, the ribbon was cut on the first 3D-printed Habitat for Humanity home in the nation in a subdivision in Virginia. The Habitat for Humanity of the Peninsula and Greater Williamsburg partnered with Alquist to use the computer printing technology to create the three-bedroom home. The computer printing...
We Have Opinions: Provoking Thought
The turn of each New Year is often a good time for reflection, and commitment to new goals. What are your goals for your community in the coming year? Are your wells of creativity running dry? I’ve got some resources for you to consider during the coming cold months. Lest...
We Have Opinions On: Consolidated Funding
The State of New York recently released the list of grantees from the most recent round of Consolidated Funding Applications for economic development, public facilities, environmental protection, parks development, and Main Street redevelopment. The list is worth scanning if only to explore the creative ways that these funding programs are...
We Have Opinions On: Unusual Community Amenities
Many communities that are working very hard to revitalize their downtown neighborhoods wrestle with the issue of what makes sense for the future of dilapidated white elephant buildings that dominate their streetscapes. Often, these buildings are vacant movie theaters and vaudeville houses that are very expensive to rehabilitate, and difficult...
We Have Opinions On: Staying Off My Lawn
I had the great good fortune last evening to attend a talk by Temple Grandin, a professor at Colorado State, and a leading advocate for persons with autism. I was fascinated during the question and answer period by the number of young people who asked intelligent questions about autism, in...
We Have Opinions On: Popsicles and Perceptions
Sometimes, the process of creating change in your neighborhood starts with meeting your neighbors and engaging them in the conversation about how your community looks, how it works, and which of your neighbors struggle and why. It is extremely difficult to make a community-wide change on your own. In...
We Have Opinions On: Landscaping
On October 14th, the Cultural Landscape Foundation of Washington, DC awarded the Cornelia Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize. This is like the Nobel Prize for great thinkers on planting schemes. The inaugural prize was awarded to Julie Bargmann, founder of D.I.R.T. (which stands for Dump It Right There), a design...
We Have Opinions On: Details
It is amazing how often public life suffers because some fairly highly paid individual didn’t pay attention to the details. And because of those faulty details, everyone feels uncomfortable, even if they don’t know why. That was brought home to me on my drive home tonight. There is a highway...
We Have Opinions On: Blight
Blight is the process or effect of community deterioration. It can manifest in vacant and abandoned homes, litter-filled vacant lots, empty storefronts, or even lots of broken windows in a neighborhood. Blight and poverty are not the same thing, and there are plenty of poor neighborhoods that don’t exhibit any...