(via urbnfutr)
A series that involves recording a location, to show the passing of time in a montage style. There is a sense of intimate intricacy of how time moves, and how people, albeit in a different time, are actually closer to one another and traveling in the same shared space. I’ve always been intrigued by the constant subtle changes in my urban environment.
(via urbanehood)
Read about a nice example of citizens reclaiming and improving a heavily neglected public space. Even more at their blog
(Source: urbalize)
Liz Christy in 1975, in one of the Lower East Side gardens she started. Photo by Donald Loggins.
“The collective work of homesteaders and squatters to stabilize an environment of spiraling decline was joined by the Lower East Side’s community garden movement, which sought to reclaim turf from encroaching urban blight. The resident gardeners set out to transform vacant lots strewn with trash, bricks, old appliances, and automobiles into green spaces. The movement’s first community garden began in 1973, when a group of residents threw balloons containing plant seeds and bulbs into a large fenced-in parcel on Houston Street near Bowery. The activists, who called themselves Green Guerillas, assisted local residents and block associations in starting gardens and, at times, gaining permission to use city-owned properties…”
- Christopher Mele, Selling the Lower East Side: Culture, Real Estate, and Resistance in New York City.
(Source: morusnyc.org)
“’Placemaking’ is both an overarching idea and a hands-on tool for improving a neighborhood, city or region. It has the potential to be one of the most transformative ideas of this century.” -Metropolitan Planning Council of Chicago
An interesting article that highlights community grassroots participation and suggests innovative means of better integrating cities with its residents.
(Source: pps.org)
“What Citizens Add to Planning
Kaid Benfield. Jan 6, 2012.
The video at the end of this post is a rare and engaging inside peek at two planning workshops in the small, historic city of Belfast (population 6,658) and the town of Lincolnville (population 2,042), both in Maine. The most eloquent voices in the room are not professional planners, but ordinary citizens who care about their community, raising such issues as how their streets function, building facades, walkability, places for seniors and kids, safety, and the like.
I really like it as an example of what real folks – not just we enviros and “urban wonks” – care about, as well as what a citizen planning session feels like. The workshops were hosted in October 2011 by the local nonprofit Friends of Midcoast Maine, in partnership with the Orton Family Foundation and The Project for Public Spaces, assisted by Vermont-based planner Paul Dreher.
Friends of Midcoast Maine, led by my friend Jane LaFleur, is organized “to help Midcoast communities plan for a vibrant and sustainable future. [The group is] an independent resource that provides expertise in support of smart growth principles.” More specifically, according to a recent annual report, it provides education, workshops and technical assistance; project endorsements and advocacy for sound planning and sensible growth. It works along a stretch running roughly 100 miles northeast from Brunswick to Bucksport and including many historic communities.”
Via: The Atlantic
Video: Friends of Midcoast Maine
