Problem-solving courts in the Bronx

Entry: Tuesday September 19, 2006

I'd been remiss in not checking out Sam Smith's City Desk blog of late. There's a lot of good stuff there, including a reprint of his open letter to Marion Barry, full of advice, upon his election as mayor in 1978. I like point 18:

Buildings should be determined by the people and not vice versa. If you must plan, make sure your plans are incomplete so the people using them can influence them. Most city planners want to homogenize a town and let their structures order culture. This is the antithesis of what a city should be about. The success of a city is not determined by the logic of its design but by the multiplicity of its opportunities.

But Sam also links to an important piece about Bronx Community Solutions, a "problem-solving" court initiative in the Bronx, and this blog entry, "An Introduction to Bronx Community Solutions (Part II)," which explains a particular example of how this can work in the field. The blog is titled Changing the Court and is described as:

A chronicle of how a group of planners and practitioners are attempting to change the Bronx court system's approach to low-level criminal offending.

I'll definitely be checking into this blog from time to time. And I sure would love to have Borf, Nores, and Koma out in some abandoned lot in some neighborhood, having to spend a full-day, working with others, to clean it up!

Index Keywords: civic-engagement; public-safety