Friday 5: What I've found interesting during the week of November 20-27th

November 27th, 2009

Five of the best articles and blog posts I’ve read over the past week.

Note: In order to keep better track, (and a more reliable schedule) of my Recent Readings lists, I and going to use the meme of ‘Friday 5’, which several other blogs I use also employ. it is kind of like the Twitter ‘Follow Friday’ meme, but with blgs and interesting posts instead of Twitter account. this format has the additional benefit of giving people some weekend reading material, and a chance to catch up on some interesting articles and blog posts they may have missed during the busy work week. Hope you like it.

  • How to build community: first, get out of the office Four suggestions on how to create community assets our of unused land and buildings/ Key Quotation: ‘It’s great to see how much can be done by the will of the people.’

    Image from Identity Theft for Cities
  • Identity Theft for Cities, by Carol Coletta on Good.is, A look at how poor regional planning can suck the life out of cities. This is especially true of a region like metro Phoenix, which although thought of as one ‚Äòcity‚Äô by many outsiders, in fact has several dozen different municipal and county governments, each with separate (and sometimes competitng or conflicting) visions. Carol is one of my Favorite urban commentators. She is the President and CEO of CEOs for Cities, and the host of the nationally-syndicated public radio show, Smart City Radio. I follow both religiously. Carol can also be found on Twitter.
  • What Makes Cities Live. Why authenticity matters in creating great urban spaces, even if it is gritty and a bit messy at times.

And for some non-urban, but related fare:

  • The Generation M Manifesto. A letter to the “Old People Who Run the World” describing the tectonic shift that is currently rocking the social, political, and economic landscape. Generation M “is less about age and more about a movement that is doing meaningful stuff that matters the most”
  • The Death of the Cool. How ‘being cool’ has become yet another commodity it today’s society. Key quotation: “Where literature once gave us models to emulate in creating lives for ourselves, media now give us merely images to ape.”

To keep up with other articles that I’ve found interesting, be sure to check out my shared items on Google Reader.