What Makes a Great Place? We can reach out to each other. We can love ourselves and each other. We can revere all life and the generations to come. And we can make the government our partner in this great effort Let us begin
Art of City Living: Is Everbody happy? Art in the Village
How did an impoverished North Philadelphia community transform abandoned lots into whimsical sculpture gardens? How did six-story murals sprout on the sides of crumbling buildings?
Walking through the streets today, neighbors proudly call to point out to you the once–forsaken lots—more than 120 of them—that today display colorful murals. One of the murals is based on a painting of flowers first done by neighborhood children and then painted three stories high on the side of a building. Nearby a parade of angels representing the world’s faiths—Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and others—guard a park and create a haven for performances.
• Cities For All [Links Compliments to Radical Reference Librarians - An Interview with Angela Glover Blackwell Policies that fight sprawl ; Extreme Makeover: Neighborhood Edition ]
• · It can happen in your town: Streetscapes blooming with wildflowers, industrial waterfronts transformed into parks The New City Beautiful ; Two Crises; One Solution
• · · Resource Guide for Just, Green, Beautiful Communities Sustainable design tools ; Seven Great Ideas for Movement Builders
• · · · Eurozine Review ; Sign and Sight
• · · · · To Build a Library ; All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way A review of books on happiness
• · · · · · The good people at Forbes produce an estimate of how much money a family needs to live a "comfortably affluent" lifestyle The Comfortable Life ; New game-like computer software is empowering ordinary citizens to help design better cities. Can the professionals and the public learn to play well together? Sim civics