I’ve long been a proponent of the buy local movement for the warm fuzzies, but now I can bolster that with a more powerful motivator: guilt. Buying local has become a bit of a sport in our household as we try to create the most underdog windfall with each purchase. We feel obliged to help pick up the tab for the beautiful streetscapes and social capital that locally-owned businesses provide.
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The big box development model is designed to be transitory.
Read MoreAfter a string of fatalities, Houston police issue warnings to pedestrians such as "look before you step out" and "don't wear headphones."
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A snarky video on traffic from a guy sick of getting speeding tickets on over-designed stroads.
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Honesty. In times like this, it may be your only friend.
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We need to create an environment with flexibility. It’s crucial in making our cities better places. Also, don't be stupid. That part is very important.
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This has been a tough winter, even for a Minnesotan who generally likes the cold and snow. I must admit that January was made a lot more bearable with the knowledge that the first week of February I would be heading somewhere nice and warm: Dallas. Well, while it is substantially warmer than Minnesota, 20 degrees and snow was not what I was hoping for. How quaint – I even packed my shorts. It is rather comical to watch how they handle things down here though, one of the few times Minnesota can be a little bit smug. They even closed school tomorrow. I get it, but we don’t even bother to shovel this little amount of snow.
Enjoy the week’s news.
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We have embraced a degree of urbanism in our towns and cities. The planning, architecture and development communities have slowly adopted concepts of good urban design. It’s part of an ideological battle that the New Urbanists have won. But, we aren’t all the way there yet. We’ve only finished half the equation.
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If we want to build strong towns, we don’t need a new form of the centralized approach, a new variant of the current theme. We don’t seek a different code of centralized regulations or a different set of centralized spending priorities. What America needs is a different system that begins on the block level and builds from there. It is far beyond simply “going local” but instead is a full embrace of the proven wisdom of complex, self-emergent systems.
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