The Urban Planning “S” Words It seems in urban planning there’s no shortage of locker room talk to describe development and infrastructure you personally don’t like. For example, the epithet “sprawl.” Some may say “I know it when I see it,” but too often it’s just an insult with no objective definition; perhaps just a […]
There are a couple maps like this floating around where the US is divided up into geographic regions based on culture, economics, or other kinds of geography. This is one of the more interesting, from the New York Times-slash-Joel Kotkin. Here’s the map: The author of the opinion article, Parag Khanna, makes a compelling argument that […]
In November, I joined an overflow crowd at the Walker Arts Center to hear a panel discussion entitled Midwest? The Past, Present, and Future of Minnesota’s Identity. The discussion stemmed from common questions of identity, and proposed that Minnesota and the Twin Cities secede from the “Midwest” and claim ownership of a new region: the North. […]