This Place Matters

This Place Matters is a program through the National Trust for Historic Preservation to create a central clearinghouse for places that matter to individual people.  You can register at the site, upload photos of your special place to a group Flickr pool, geotag them in a community Google Map, and dowload a "This Place Matters sign to affix to your place.

The idea is similar to the Orion Magazine's The Place Where You Live web feature (also featured in the print magazine) which I have proudly written  for.

The Case for Suburban Renewal

Richard Florida in the Wall Street Journal:

Remaking America's sprawling suburbs, with their enormous footprints, shoddy construction, hastily built infrastructure and dying malls, is shaping up to be the biggest urban revitalization challenge of modern times—far larger in scale, scope and cost than the revitalization of our inner cities.

The Case for Suburban Renewal - WSJ.com

UPDATE: HERE is the unedited version.

Here are some resources on retrofitting the suburbs for sustainability and livability.

• The Sprawl Repair Manual
• Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning the Suburbs
• Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities
• Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature
• Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability
• Superbia: 31 Ways to Create Sustainable Neighborhoods

The Only Real Option is Beauty

Fascinating interview with designer Bruce Mau, courtesy of The Climate Desk, a collaboration of Mother Jones,Slate, Wired, The Atlantic, PBS’s Need to Know, Reuters, Grist, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.


His arguments: suburbs are evolving, they are wildly successful so we have to work with them, it is possible to have a beautiful life experience in a low-density environment.  We need to reframe the sustainability discussion to make it positive, emphasize opportunities, and inspire people to live and work in a new way that is more compelling and more meaningful than the old way.

Place Samplings 10/9/2010

Better Burb Contest- "The time for thinking cautiously is over"
From the website: 
There has been a crisis of imagination, and your bold new ideas are urgently needed. There should be no preconceptions about what is or is not possible. What would you do on these acres of opportunity? Build a car-free community for thousands? Plant an oasis of urban agriculture? Produce renewable energy and provide well-paying green jobs? Use landscape systems to repair ruptures in regional ecologies? Introduce armatures to enhance public space and the civic realm?


Other Links of Note:

Obama Administration Rolls Out the Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative

Designing Buildings that Battle Obesity

Creative Placemaking Through the Arts

Detroit

• How To Be The Ultimate Metro Detroit Locavore
• Time wanes for Detroit project: Some question impact after a year of reporting 

Blog Spotlight: PlaceShakers

The Skies Here Are Bigger Than In New York

David Byrne of Talking Heads fame wrote a lengthy journal entry on his impression of the Motor City. Nothing much new here, but this was interesting:

“Are there other towns that have been hit so hard that have come back?” Both Michael Morris of Artangel and I replied “Glasgow”. It was known as having the worst slums in Europe back in the day, and I remember visiting my grandparents and all the buildings were grimy black, from soot. That city hasn’t come back as an industrial powerhouse it once was (steel and shipbuilding) but as a cultural hub. Life is good there now, and the city is cleaned up and nice to look at.

Other cities have used culture to bring life back—Morris mentioned Bilbao—but to be honest, so much of Detroit is simply gone, vanished, that that kind of revitalization is hard to imagine. Bilbao was a smaller town, even if it was a dump. However, one can imagine that if the city center here can become more of the focus then a much smaller town with vibrant life might emerge. Forget much of the urban sprawl (or turn it into farmland) and see if the wonderful stuff can be encouraged and supported. Again, it could be arts and theater and music that spurs some of that—there were 3 movies and a TV show shooting when we where there; Matthew Barney was preparing a large scale performance involving molten metal not too far away, and local artists and musicians have always gone their own dark ways here—so the interest is there. The skies here are bigger than in New York.

David Byrne's Journal: 09.23.10: Don't Forget the Motor City

PlaceLit: Rhonda Welsh

My Only Home

By Rhonda Welsh

Detroit is my only home.
Child of the west side...
Majestic, Puritan, Elmhurst,
Linwood, Plymouth, Eight Mile

All the while
craved a
different existence
but finally realized
Detroit is who I am.

Good students teased for acting too white
while the suburbs scream too black.
Neighborhoods who know no lack
always labeled poor.

Detroit was once much more than…

Dirty streets. Corrupt politicians.
Perverted superstitions
make some people treat books
like bad ju ju.

But my Detroit is not that simple…

Kind-hearted hustlers work day and night.
Make a dollar out of fifteen cents.
The auto industry came and went
but true Detroiters always make it work.

Saturday greens from Eastern Market
and a new hat from Mr. Song.
You can't go wrong on Sunday mornings
shouting and rocking
until the blues melt away.

Detroiters always seek
a brand new day.

Even our skyline boasts a Renaissance.

And the summer…

Caribbean Picnic on Belle Isle,
Moonlit concerts at Campus Martius,
and greasy fish fingers
clap to the beat
with sandal clad feet
at the African World Festival.

Poetry is everywhere.
Music Hall, Scarab Club, 1515 Broadway,
even at the Y-M-C-A.

Detroit is no longer in its heyday,
but its days are not finished yet.

There is much more life.
More pride runs through the veins.
Soon the activists must rise and take the reins.

Restore what has been lost.
No longer give thought
to those who diss and dismiss.

It is not a wasteland.
There are families here.

Educators, doctors, lawyers,
butchers, bakers,
yes, even candlestick makers reside in Detroit.

Shake off depleted self-esteem
that hangs over the city like a cloud.
Shout the city's praises out loud
and recognize its worth.

Induce the new birth.
Invoke that migrant spirit
transplanted from red earth.

Don't let it die an unnatural death.
Purge the dross and rebuild the best.

Detroit is the only home I've ever known.

©Rhonda Welsh 2010
from the book Red Clay Legacy

Read more: http://detroit.blogs.time.com/2010/10/04/a-detroit-poet-and-her-city-as-muse/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogs%2Fthedetroitblog+%28TIME%3A+The+Detroit+Blog%29#ixzz11RTmgfLn

Place Events: 2010 Tour de Troit

The 2010 Tour de Troit (TdT) is now a thing of the past.  In it's ninth year, TdT saw more than 3500 riders converge on Roosevelt Park, at the foot of the Detroit's most famous ruins, the old  Michigan Central Station depot.

My husband and I (along with our friend Rashmi) rode the tour on September 25, which was also our 11th wedding anniversary (that's us at left as we rounded Belle Isle).  The weather was a perfect, crisp 62 degrees, with a mix of sun and clouds, and the pace was slow and leisurely. The tour took us on a 30-mile loop of the City, through Corktown, Downtown Detroit, paralleling the Dequindre Cut, around Belle Isle, through Indian Village, past the Heidelberg project, through Midtown Detroit, TechTown, Mexican Town, and back to Roosevelt Park where local beers and pulled pork from Slows Bar BQ and tamales from Honeybee Market were available for the starving riders.

The event seeks to bring people up-close-and-personal with Detroit's neighborhoods and to promote greenlinks in the City.


2010 Tour Detroit - a set on Flickr