SoDal, Kampala Green, Urban Peripheries, Semicolon Love , more
Fixing Southern Dallas (Start by Calling it SoDal)
“Fixing southern Dallas requires interrupting the cycle of failure and creating enough reverse momentum for success to start breeding success. It won’t be easy, and it won’t happen quickly, but here are some ways that might help get it started:”
“The Transition Towns movement, a coalition of community-led response initiatives to peak oil and climate change, has been spreading rapidly. Starting in Ireland, and spreading to the UK, Transition Towns can now be found as far afield as Australia.”
Kampala’s Endangered Green Space
“The current population growth rate in Kampala city puts the existence of public green spaces in danger. Public green spaces are areas gazetted by law to serve as free leisure parks or national heritage sites and are generally meant to improve the aesthetic beauty of urban areas. However, after the colonial era, successive governments disregarded their regular maintenance hence some remained dirty and unappealing to the public while others were parceled into plots and given to private developers.”
The Militarization of Urban Peripheries
Urban peripheries in Third World countries have become war zones where states attempt to maintain order based on the establishment of a sort of “sanitary cordon” to keep the poor isolated from “normal” society. “Army sources confirmed that techniques employed in the occupation of the Morro da Providéncia favela [slum] are the ones Brazilian soldiers use in the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti”
Why Transit Projects Fail
“From a distance, the finger-pointing and the hand-wringing over the seeming demise of plans to build rail to Dulles Airport make it appear that the project collapsed under its own weight. The Dulles dust-up is not a unique disease, but rather a symptom of a much larger national transportation illness.”
“It was nearly hidden on a New York City Transit public service placard exhorting subway riders not to leave their newspaper behind when they get off the train. “Please put it in a trash can,” riders are reminded. After which Neil Neches, an erudite writer in the transit agency’s marketing and service information department, inserted a semicolon. The rest of the sentence reads, “that’s good news for everyone.”
And finally, if you’re in the Minneapolis area…
“Saturday, the Walker Art Center unveiled a new design exhibit entitled “Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes.” The show features more than 75 pieces of art and architecture all garnering inspiration from the ’burbs.”
Hey, World! Buffalo is Calling!
