Libraries on their way to the basement
You can make your own mind up about the attributes or lack thereof in the latest plan to demolish libraries in New York City (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/nyregion/public-agencies-needing-money-give-up-land-and-buildings.html). Personally I do not have the expertise to line up the values numerically on both sides of this argument. What I would say, and I have to friends, is that ...
The Poets (Laureate) of Cities
If you’re lucky, you find out about a cultural shift before it’s over. I feel certain that many people living in the 1920s were aware that a cultural shift was going on, especially if they lived in Europe. Quite a few Americans are now aware that a cultural shift is occurring in the US. It ...
What SimCity can’t catch
A friend wrote to me responding to a post on The Dish (http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/04/30/cities-dont-have-a-reset-button/): “What is striking to me about SimCity and other models for urban planning is how increasingly-sophisticated they are getting, thanks to improving technology, incorporating more and more variables relating to everything from population density to urban waste and climate change; yet however ...
US Cities in Crisis
That is a headline that sounds too familiar. Patrick Sharkey, an NYU sociologist, reminds in his op/ed piece in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/29/opinion/the-urban-fire-next-time.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0) that the crisis is with us – if it ever went away – and will be here to stay if we don’t change the policies that directly affect our cities. Like ...
Spring!
At last! A weather prediction of five days in a row of 60 degree temperatures. (Then sadly back to the 50s.) But let’s celebrate the warmth while we have it. And along with the sun come the turtles. While others may concentrate on flowers, turtles are my love. I can completely identify watching them claw ...
Confusing Arts and Culture UK edition
I feel sure that we will never be at a loss for these stories. A headline in today’s Guardian reads, “British culture should be seen as commodity, says Maria Miller [culture minister]“. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/24/british-culture-commodity-maria-miller) Her stirring words on this topic were delivered before an audience of “senior cultural figures” at the British Museum. She vowed to ...
Confusing Arts and Culture in Minneapolis
I received an email blast with this link to an article, http://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2013/04/counting-arts-economic-drivers-dicey-proposition, in which the author reports on a Creative Vitality Index Report that rates Minneapolis as the sixth strongest arts community in the nation. The author goes on to mock this by maintaining that although she is “all for the arts,” the figure the report ...
Cities and Flow
In The Opinionator (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/the-music-of-flow/) a blog of the New York Times, Richard Carrick wrote about “flow”, the concept developed by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, a psychologist trained at the University of Chicago, and now teaching at Claremont Graduate University in California where he is also director and founder of the Quality of Life Research Center. Mr. Carrick, a ...
My Neighborhood
I live in Harlem. Not Central Harlem but South Harlem which real estate developers have tried unsuccessfully to name Soha. I am about a block and a half from the northern boundary of Central Park at 110th Street. The chic development of Harlem is not where I am. It’s a couple of blocks over on ...
Thatcher and Consensus
Among the massive commentary that is flowing around the legacy of Margaret Thatcher what interests me most was not just her disinterest in building consensus but that it was anathema to her. Maybe it was part of the time as some have suggested – there were plenty of things to oppose – or that she ...