Redesign city services to tackle urban blight

In 2011, the city of Memphis, Tennessee faced a backlog of 25,000 code enforcement cases and 40,000 complaints about overgrown lots. Like many cities recently, Memphis has a budget stretched thin by shrinking tax revenues due to the Great Recession and declining property tax revenues. How could the city ever catch up? Two words: process...

Design, public space, and reclaiming suburbia

This 2007 talk by James Howard Kunstler on the awfulness of our public spaces, especially suburbia, confirmed the darker notions I’d thought or felt about U.S. public spaces. He graphically illustrates what happens when public entities like cities and counties design things and not systems.

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