Tipping points
Submitted by lmcshane on Sun, 02/10/2008 - 10:32.
I keep looking for the signs. Today's Plain Dealer proclaims hope for downtown. Believe me, I want to believe it. How many downtown employees live, shop and recreate downtown? Have institutions done all they can to encourage a small footprint? I like Michael Schwartz at CSU--does he live nearby? Ditto, for all the CEOs and intitutional leaders at the Clinic, CWRU, CPL, NEORSD, NOACA...
I don't mean to be mean, but really LEAD us. Send a message. Keep your estates...I really don't care where you spend the weekend, but consider a pied–à–terre
Really. Send a message.
“What are our needs for happiness?” Peñalosa said in explaining his policies. “We need to walk, just as birds need to fly. We need to be around other people. We need beauty. We need contact with nature. And, most of all, we need not to be excluded. We need to feel some sort of equality.”
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new traditionalism
As for my own institution, I would like to see the downtown library branch open late until 8 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays, for intelligent after-the-day's-work civil discourse,
and closed on Sundays, so individuals and families could devote one day a week to recreate and explore our environments outside a building.
Again
Again--these announcements do nothing for the city. Think about it.
Libraries, schools
Our communities need libraries and schools as a physical place to go. We need to care about these buildings, just as we care about our kids. The physical state of our schools and libraries reflects the larger society around us.
Some days, I see glimmers of hope for our society in our libraries and in our schools. Don't abandon these institutions.