December

Yikes, it's been a long November! This semester's wrapping up, though. One more and I'll be a real bona fide Urban Planner, just waiting for someone to employ my skillful self.

This thing is happening in Ann Arbor where people are starting to realize that homeless folks live here! And that it's really cold in Michigan. And that one underresourced warming center can't take care of them all.

It is BLOWING their MINDS.


Reading live tweets of the A2 council meetings always makes me angry in a really unproductive way, so I try not to read them. Besides, it's like being nerdy but not being nerdy enough to actually be out there and be cool and live tweet things myself. Well, I learned about investment analysis all day and now I have two kittens sleeping on top of me, so I'm not going anywhere.

Adventures of a one-car cross-county household

Life gets a lot cheaper when you move in with somebody, and Alex and I recently took our Ann Arbor and Detroit habitations and merged them into one big beautiful Ypsilanti. Besides sharing rent, cooking, and bunnies, we decided to junk his clunker and rely solely on my decade-old Ford Focus, which has belonged to every member of my family and traversed the country twice.

Bunny numero uno

It's not like we have ten children, or any other small mammals in our care besides the furry type. But still, with our wildly regional schooling and employment patterns, there are days in which we have to be...creative.

A Detroit School of Urban Studies?

Ooh, sounds cool, what is it?

A week ago I attended a forum at the University of Michigan on the question of whether it makes sense to establish a Detroit School of urban studies. First of all, that’s pretty damn fancy. Second, everybody in that room was geeking out over cities, which I found delightful.

photo by Carolyn Lusch--that's me

One panel member made the theoretical case for the new School—planning has traditionally been seen as managing growth, but Detroit is not growing. How does one use planning to manage shrinking or decline?

Another panelist added that Detroit is not on a path of returning the past; rather, the creation of something completely new. We all know that manufacturing in Detroit will never be what it was. Thus, revitalizing is not an appropriate word.

Ok, I’m with you for all that.

But what about…?