Sorry I missed my weekly Friday 5 feature yesterday. Several Christmas parties made less time for posts this past week. Nevertheless, I still managed to read my usual level of articles.  To make up for being a day late, I’ll include a bonus article this week. So here is the ‘Saturday 6’; a selection of articles I found interesting over the past week.

• Infrastructure and Social Interactions. A look at how infrastructure can help reuniting a divided society, and created much-needed jobs for people of all talents and classes.

• We define ourselves by our neighbourhoods. An interesting article about the importance of neighborhoods to a city’s urban fabric. The article focuses on Toronto, but the lessons are applicable to any city, including (especially?) Phoenix.

• Bookshops are not dead. Long may it remain so. Why (independent) book stores remain more important than ever (hint, books are different from other types of consumable media.

• Reclaiming Urban Spaces. (Youtube Video) Paul White relates how cities like New York have reclaimed urban spaces from the car- and how the battle for clean, livable cities can be waged- and won. Recorded at TEDxEast on November 6, 2009 in New York City.

• What’s Wrong With Gentrification? A look at why displacement fears are misguided and how gentrification is actually a welcome development, especially when the alternative is abandonment.

• Self Connections: Being who you are. A piece by my friend Rhonda Bannard, founder of Inspired Connections. Rhonda takes a look at the South African concept of Ubuntu and how a person cannot be an individual without being part of a larger community.

Hope you have a great holidays.  I’ll be spending much of the next two weeks with friends and family, so my blogging will be even more erratic than normal. One of my New Years Resolutions is to blog more regularly and with more original content.  Hope it sticks!