Archive for March, 2013

Tweet Today’s post is by contributing writer Jennifer Gunther: Thursday morning on the northwest corner of Camelback Road and 3rd Avenue in uptown Phoenix, the community was welcomed back to a place it hadn’t been able to open a door to or sit down in for seven years. An array of developers and local leaders ─ among them Lorenzo Perez and John Kitchell of Venture Projects, Shannon Scutari of Sustainable Communities Collaborative, Kimber Lanning of Local First Arizona and Phoenix city councilman Tom Simplot ─ announced the adaptive reuse of the locally beloved Beef Eaters restaurant building. Being rebranded as…

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Tweet Today’s post is by guest writer Joe Zazzera. Joe is a Biomimicry Specialist, LEED AP ID+C, a Green Roof Professional and Living Wall designer, and he is the founder of Arizona Based Plant Solutions, Inc.  When you think of nature as it applies to building design, operation and maintenance, you probably think about the garden atrium in the building, the staged greenery throughout the lobbies or perhaps the views to common areas planted in greenery. However, there is a new “nature” within a building. It is a concept termed biomimicry, which literally means to mimic life. In 1997 biologist and…

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Tweet Today’s post is by contributing writer, Will Novak, an officer of the Thunderdome Neighborhood Association for Non-Auto Mobility. The City of Phoenix Streets Department is finalizing a new design for Roosevelt Street in Downtown Phoenix, between Central Ave and 4th Street, with the goal of making it more pedestrian-friendly.  While this ought to be exciting news here in the land of six-lane arterials, the plan the City has shown the community is underwhelming at best.  While hundreds of jurisdictions across the country have adopted “Complete Streets” policies to promote walking and biking, Phoenix is being left in the dust…

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Tweet Yesterday, I attended a wonderful museum bike tour where we visited the Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center that displays the history of Japanese internment camps in Portland. And later we visited the Oregon Historical Society, and saw the All Aboard: Railroading and Portland’s Black Community exhibit, which is running through April 21st.  As we looked through these exhibits of past acts of discrimination that Oregon committed, including institutionalized segregation, there was some discussion as to how it’s had a ripple effect to today. One person joked that it’s hard to tell that Oregon isn’t segregated today, as Portland is so…

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