Ideology and Art Fair (from the front lines)

Funny things happen when you squish all the ideologues in Ann Arbor into one block in ninety-degree heat and set the mood with an suave, amplified trilingual guitarist. Yes, friends, Art Fair may be a blast or, if you're a townie, a plague upon the city, but I contend that the real place to go for the action is the Walk of the Non-Profits. Stretching between Division and Fifth along Liberty, everybody from the Jesus Made Me Kosher to the Land A Space Rover On Mars to the Republicans/Democrats/ProLife/ProChoice/ProBanana/AntiBanana/ProHappiness/AntiFun - it's all there.

And I was all there, as much as the heat would allow me to be, myself one of these poor do-gooder souls who invested their hearts and sweat into a ten by ten plastic booth, hoping to lure passersby into my den of goodwill.

Cities sufferin from the chillies

Grand Rapids Transit Center, looking wintery. Photo by Carolyn.

This weekend, my homeskillet and I went over to Grand Rapids to hang out with his folks. I really like GR but I'm still not an expert on it, so I asked him to show me around downtown some more. We parked over by the transit center and began walking, ready for an urban adventure.

I looked over at him as we passed Founder's and he was crying.

Of public space and peeing

No, the pissing season is never over, not even in the winter. The message was tellingly scrawled on the women's room door in an Ann Arbor park - I imagine because it's pretty easy to open a fly at a distance, but taking off one's pants on the banks of the Huron River is another matter. If you're a woman (or a particularly scrupulous man), you're not in possession of a car, and you don't live nearby as I do, how long do you have to walk from that defunct latrine to find a suitable place to pee?

Belle Isle is a park, not a commonwealth

view from Belle Isle beach, photo by Carolyn Lusch

Crain's Detroit Business published an opinion piece by Keith Crain encouraging the city of Detroit to consider all ideas, however ridiculous, regarding Belle Isle - including those that involve creating an exclusive libertarian utopia commonwealth.
 
He could not be more wrong. Everyone in metro Detroit, including business leaders and politicians, should summarily reject this idea. They should do this to show Detroiters that they understand the difference between apocalyptic, frightening pitches and real, reasonable proposals for change.

Churches, Public Space, and Demographic Change

Here's my idea. Nobody better steal this, 'cause I'm doing it as soon as I've got IRB approval and GIS at my fingertips (read: once I get into grad school, hopefully next fall).

My colleague recently showed me the website of a church in Livonia, MI, that makes explicit reference to reclaiming public space. This caught my attention pretty quick. How many pastors are urban planners--and particularly in Livonia?

How do they go about this reclamation process? So far, they've got a labyrinth outside that I assume is completely public, and a coffee shop that is probably public to the extent that you pay for a drink (though I could be wrong).

an early example of making good use of public space

This got me thinking about other examples of public space in religious institutions.