Librarians converge on… the airport?

This weekend — from Thursday, February 28, to Sunday, March 2 — Fairbanks will be host to the Alaska Library Association annual conference. About 300 librarians (professional and paraprofessional) from around the state will meet, confer, and otherwise hobnob with their fellow information wizards at the Princess Riverside Lodge. In between sessions on library [...]

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Addendum to “The secret ingredient”

After reading yesterday’s post (“The secret ingredient? People!“), my wife raised concern that I might be perceived as promoting restaurant- and café-eating as a way of life superior to eating at home with your family. Nothing could be farther from my intent.
Time with your partner, children, parents, or other family is invaluable, and the [...]

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The secret ingredient? People!

I hope that my vicious lie doesn’t forever taint my daughter’s valuation of public space.
Tired of being cooped up, my older daughter and I went Sunday for a meandering walk, which ultimately headed downtown. Before reaching the fountain (our destination), she started to complain that she was cold. I suggested we find a [...]

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Distinct local character versus individuality?

A thorny question has arisen at Discontinuous Permafrost: what does it mean for a place to have local character, or for people to have local character?
I want to live in a place with a distinctive character, not someplace that looks like everywhere else. (On this theme, I heartily recommend James Howard Kunstler’s Geography of [...]

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Follow the discussion through e-mail

A few of my readers do not use a feed aggregator, but prefer to be notified by e-mail of new posts. I’ve also had a few requests for some kind of e-mail notification for new comments. So, voila! If you’ll look at the top box at right (“Subscribe by E-mail”), you’ll notice [...]

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What’s so bad about neighbors?

What do you dislike about having neighbors?
Last Friday after work, a friend and I were talking over beer about her plans to return to Fairbanks. (She currently lives in Haines.) When she lived in Fairbanks before, she lived completely off the grid in the remotest of places: she says that she often had [...]

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“Help, I’ve been disenfranchized by city planning!”

The cold snap is behind us for now, thank heavens, though surely we’ll get more in winters to come. Now seems like a fair time to look at the relationship between people’s civil right of peaceable assembly (yes, the one guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution) and Interior Alaska’s weather — [...]

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Downtown Fairbanks “circulation” and place-making

“Eighty percent of success is showing up.” –Woody Allen
Before us is a fantastic opportunity for place-making and community-building. We have a chance to make a city center that will be welcoming and convenient to pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit riders. And I’m excited to be in the thick of it.
Since the first public hearing [...]

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Neighborhood design: a Sesame Street-based analysis (Part 3)

This post continues Neighborhood design: a Sesame Street-based analysis (Part 2) (which continues Part 1).
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Why would people be walking among their neighbors in the first place? I want to suggest a few reasons and to look at the conditions that would make those reasons possible. Keep in mind that one reason alone, if [...]

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