Snow is a truth-teller. When it’s freshly fallen, it becomes an instant record of how we move about in our communities. And if we listen to what it’s telling us, it can help us shape and build more successful places. Edward Erfurt develops this idea more fully in this article from Strong Towns. And with
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When it comes to places, the Bismarcks, and Minots of the world are more alike than they are different. We struggle in the same ways, we copy each others ideas, and the results we get leave little to get excited about. It’s a whole lot of meh. So, what does it take to make a
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Do you know the difference between a street and a road? A street is a part of an ecosystem for building community wealth and prosperity. A road connection between places. A stroad is a mash-up of the two ideas that fails in both areas. This idea — the differences between streets and roads, comes from
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The building of public infrastructure is big business and in Oklahoma, the desire to build a $5 billion turnpike expansion project was greater than the desire to do it legally and transparently. That ruling came through the courts on December 1st, and it was ugly. The finding was that the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority had “willfully
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What does a recent transplant from NYC to Waco, Texas, notice? For one thing, the number of people she recognizes and knows as she goes through her day has gone way up. These relationships are known as second-ring relationships, those with people who are not yet friends, but they’re not strangers either. And it’s on
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What happens when big institutions like state and local governments are guided by momentum and past practices rather than the communities they were set up to serve? It’s a question that stretches beyond borders and needs to be taken up regularly anytime a big idea, particularly those tagged as ‘infrastructure’ are introduced. In this article
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Would you like to be less reliant on your car? Should I assume you even have a car? After all, they are expensive. Those are odd questions to ask in an article titled about local grocery stores, but they’re at the heart of the question that asks why our neighborhood grocery stores disappeared. Minot used
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Flood protection, NAWS, road maintenance and construction, fire stations — these are just a few of the big ticket capital infrastructure projects we in Minot are trying to figure out how to pay for. That invites the question — when should we bond (take on debt) for these things and under what circumstances? Check out
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It’s one of those things that most of us take for granted — being able to go where we want, when we want, without logistics planning or concerns about how we’re going to get there. I’m talking about not having to worry about barriers like sets of stairs, steps, curbs, irregular thresholds, or the countless
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Do you view car ownership as a luxury or as the standard? Your answer to the question — probably — informs more about how you view our community and the investments we should make than you realize. And one simple way to consider a different perspective — get out and walk. For more perspective on
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If you take a minute and think about what makes Minot unique, you probably won’t have to work hard to land on music. From the Minot Symphony and the Western Plains Opera to Why Not Fest, Leewok and all the regular music you can catch at places like Ebeneezers and Souris River Brewing, Minot’s music
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A home in the country — it’s a long-standing commonly held goal among many of us. We want the peace, tranquility, privacy. But it’s a desire in conflict with another common goal — vibrant, engaged, communities. It’s hard to have both. But in Savannah, Georgia, a set of colliding circumstances created a place that captures
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What type of land development fosters an entrepreneurial ecosystem? If we think in terms of the biological ecosystem, we don’t have sustainability unless there are species at every level of the food chain. That metaphor speaks to a start-small mentality; this commentary from Strong Towns does also.
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How do we awaken citizens from their apathy and get them engaged with the decisions being made in their communities? One town in Colorado made an investment in technology, trashed the traditional model that only allowed input at live meetings, and catered to the lives of their citizens. The result is a cross-section of public
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“A couple years ago, it would’ve been hard to find a tourist in Bentonville. Now there are people here from all over the world every weekend.” The quote is from an article on Strong Towns, and the sentiment is the result of a transformation that’s taken place over the past 10-years. The lesson worth evaluating
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