Planners like me are fascinated by places: urban places, suburban places, rural places, pure places, polluted places, inside places, outside places, old places, new places, traditional places, edgy places, conservative places, progressive places, sacred places, cursed places, mysterious places, places with potential, places with little potential, places that have actualized their potential…
I’ve created a new [...]
Posts under ‘Uncategorized’
Frivolous yet fun and (hopefully) fascinating new feature at www.greenvillage.us!
Want to be really, truly green? Live in the city.
A couple of years ago, the This Old House Guy did a commercial for Energy Star appliances, but in the background behind him was a very large house on a very large lot, with the three garage bays clearly visible. What’s wrong with this picture?
I’ve recently read, with fascination and appreciation, several articles and essays [...]
Thanks, Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning! You’ve made this Rochesterian very proud, impressed, grateful, and hopeful for society…
While cities too often bypass forward thinking–or any thinking– in their quest to improve their economies and communities, there are some refreshing exceptions. In Rochester, where for many decades there existed (like in most of the rest of the country) near total disconnect about the correlation between old housing stock, sprawl, poverty, students unready or [...]
Drinking Up Hemlock Lake
About forty miles south of Rochester is Hemlock Lake, a seven-mile-long Finger Lake.
Hemlock is a very special body of water. Its shorelines are totally undeveloped, except for the City of Rochester’s water infrastructure on the lake’s north shore. You see, for over a century, Rochester has not only drawn the lake’s pristine water for its [...]
The “Towne Centre” Scam
Do an internet search for “Town Center,” “Towne Center”, “Towne Centre”, or any other spelling of this phrase that you can think of. Click a few of the links that come up– and they will come up, from all corners of the country.
See what patterns emerge as you browse the Towne Centre sites.
Do you get [...]
Charles Mulford Robinson
Imagine my pleasant surprise–combined with some mortification for not knowing sooner–when I learned that one of the pioneers in urban planning and planning education was a Rochesterian. Charles Mulford Robinson was not only a pioneering urban planner who took the lead on plans for several American cities, but was also a leading planning theorist, journalist, [...]
Rite Aid display window update
Five weeks ago I reported that the display windows that the City of Rochester required on the Goodman Street side of the new Rite Aid were still vacant except for generic Rite Aid posters that had been glued to the back walls of the display windows (a couple of which had come unglued to sag [...]
Land-value taxation: Rochester auspiciously dips toe
Earlier this year, I wrote about the gigantically good sense of land-value taxation (LVT), and the madness of not doing LVT. (I also wrote a letter, published in City newsweekly, on the subject.) The only thing that frustrates me about the LVT is that I didn’t know about it sooner: the progressive property tax practice of taxing land [...]
Two posters now sagging in Rite Aid display windows
It’s two weeks since my last post, and now there are two posters in the Rite Aid display windows that have come unglued from the displays’ back walls and are sagging sadly and unattractively against the glass. I am going to suggest to the neighborhood association there that they approach Rite Aid about putting some [...]
Probably not the last Rite Aid display window update
It’s now August 5 and still nothing in the Goodman/Monroe Avenue Rite Aid display windows, except the Rite Aid posters taped to the back walls of the display areas. Actually, one of the posters came loose about 10 days ago and is sagging against the window. Obviously, the contents of the display windows that the [...]