An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Urban Culture, Space, Architecture, and Design
Last Saturday Denver Mayor Michael Hancock held his third and final 2012 Cabinet in the Community event at the Montclair Recreation Center in East Denver. It featured presentations about the 2013 city budget by Chief Financial Officer Cary Kennedy, an update […]
Or, Did They Buy Time for Better Design? Denver City Council President Mary Beth Susman and Council member Jeanne Robb recently issued a joint press release saying they won’t vote for public financing for the Fuqua development proposed for 9th and Colorado. […]
For 15 months I’ve been following the debate about the 9th and Colorado development in Denver as a neutral observer. I’m interested in the process of urban development, and in the substance of the resulting design plans. I’m persuaded by […]
It was a pleasure to welcome Franco Minganti, Professor of American Literature at the University of Bologna, to my campus last week. Franco is the European-side Co-Director of a European Commission/United States Department of Education curriculum development grant awarded to […]
I’m not certain that Walmart has committed any, but that’s the impression conveyed by two headlines in the online Atlantic Cities last week. Walmart and the Climate of Hatred discusses an academic paper establishing an association between Walmart store locations […]
Kaid Benfield thinks so (see here and again here). He believes the word “urbanism” is overused and, consequently, stifling creative thought about cities and their planning. He thus joins vocabulary policemen like Thomas Frank who’d like to purge other words—specifically, […]
There was a nice story in last Sunday’s Denver Post about how community members in my neighborhood of Park Hill banded together to install a basketball court and paint a building on the site of shopping center that was burned […]
The debate about development at 9th and Colorado in Denver that we’re following on this blog has, by all accounts, generated a considerable volume of email to Denver City Councilors. The website Stop Walmart on Colorado Boulevard recently published one […]
In a post at Better! Cities&Towns and also PlaceShakers and NewsMakers Howard Blackson succinctly summarizes what he considers the 5 basic elements of neighborhood planning, pitched as the “5 Cs”: 1. Complete: a mix of uses (allowing living, working, playing, lounging, eating, […]
Last Sunday veteran city-watcher and freelance Denver Post columnist Susan Barnes-Gelt weighed in on what she (and I) have called the “brouhaha” at 9th and Colorado. After detailing some site history Barnes-Gelt identifies three options for moving forward. One of these […]
Last June’s Venice Seminar frequently prompted me to think about what the “deep time” perspectives of evolutionary psychology and archaeology can contribute to the conversation about intercultural place-making. I’ve argued that Evolutionary Psychology might direct us to some cross-cultural common […]
“The world’s largest retailer has an image problem.” So begins the latest, front page Denver Post story about the Walmart brouhaha at 9th and Colorado. I’m afraid it’s not only Walmart that has an image problem if the quality and tone of […]