Update: The MBTA is constructing a temporary ramp to be completed this week. Simple problems don’t have simple solutions…in fact, the more obvious the solution, the less likely it is to be solved. I’m not talking about technical problems, but community problems–problems that are systemic in nature. Efforts to address one part of the issue [...]
From the category archives:
Best Writing
I have a lucky perspective on changes in Boston. I went to college here in the late 1980s and then came back 15 years later. So much has changed–even more dramatically in the past couple of years. The Boston of my youth was what you saw on Cheers or Spenser for Hire. As a college [...]
Last week, I wrote a review at All About Cities about a fascinating book, The Concrete Dragon, about China and how her cities are being transformed, leading up to the 2008 Olympics. It’s a powerful book, written in the language and context of architecture and planning, but revealing the magnitude of revolution underway in China–another [...]
The other night, as my wife went to a meeting–one of her rare opportunities to get out and do something for herself versus managing our three kids–I decided to take the kids to Costco to pick up a couple of critical resources we can’t run out of: dog food and Enfamil. 6pm to 8pm is [...]
We live a different lifestyle than our parents. Nowhere is this more evident than on the MOJOHD TV series Technology Jones, in the lives of the people chosen to participate in this challenge where they are deprived of all their gadgets and attempt to live their lives without the benefit of technology for a week. [...]
I have avoided carrying a Blackberry for years, but in the past few weeks, I had the opportunity to test drive a Motorola Q Smartphone (I will use the term “Blackberry” generically here because that is what most people are familiar with) for my company, and, like many, many before me, found myself quickly addicted. [...]
The more I learn about urban planning, the more I know I have to learn. I recently read Suburban Transformations, by Paul Lukez, a Boston area architect. He describes an approach to planning he calls adaptive design that attempts to define a more organic approach to development. I will post a review in the next [...]
My guest blog today on All About Cities is a book review of: The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America by Katherine S. Newman, Victor Tan Chen I’ve blogged about poverty issues before from a more global perspective, but this book is a very anecdotal, specific account of real people’s lives, addressing [...]