Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space

"A community’s physical form, rather than its land uses, is its most intrinsic and enduring characteristic." [Katz, EPA] This blog focuses on place and placemaking and all that makes it work--historic preservation, urban design, transportation, asset-based community development, arts & cultural development, commercial district revitalization, tourism & destination development, and quality of life advocacy--along with doses of civic engagement and good governance watchdogging.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Upcoming

I am in the process of moving to and fixing up the new place, which won't have phone and Internet service til later in the week. Some of the things I am itching to write about include:

1. The authoritarian tendency of the Washington Post editorial page with regard to democratic management of the DC government -- in short, the newspaper that brought down a President over his abuse of power isn't too concerned about restricting democracy/abuse of power locally--why?

2. Managing your store as a destination and focusing on the total customer experience (based on a trip to Ikea as well as a WMATA service failure last week at the West and East Falls Church stations)

3. Expanding transit service in Prince George's County and relatedly

4. Designating livability-transportation advocacy representatives as participants in local planning processes to raise the discourse/ensure that better and best practices get into the mix and to make sure that broader/citywide concerns are also considered.

15 people attended the PG north county transt meeting a couple weeks ago according to the Gazette, and the more neighborhood planning reports I read, and thinking about capital improvement programs with the Department of Parks and Recreation and the DC Public Library system, I am struck by how parochial the projects are, even if they are great in terms of improving current services, we need to reach much further, recognizing that these investments will last for decades and won't get improved much in the interim.

5. Tomorrow there is this session sponsored by the DC Marketing Center: inDC: Are We Building DC as the Knowledge Capital of the World?

6. And the Downtown DC BID annual meeting is Thursday.

Some of this I will get to tonight. And there is plenty more I'd like to write about such as proposals to expand rail service, but not via Amtrak, etc.

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