Tweet Yesterday, I watched a movie called The Human Scale by Danish director Andreas Dalsgaard chronicling several cities and the way they respond to people. The movie was based on Danish architect Jan Gehl’s principles about people-oriented cities. A cautionary thread in the movie revolved around the rapid urbanization of China and how Chinese cities are dealing with the population boom by building more highways and high-rises. On a hopeful note, the movie also featured cities, like Copenhagen, New York and Melbourne, that are re-orienting their urban planning to accommodate human beings and that have transformed formerly car-oriented spaces into people-oriented…

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June 17, 2014

What is Social Capital?

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet It’s easy to feel powerless in the face of powerful private interests, such as greedy developers and large corporations who seem to have a direct line to the decision makers in the government. Here in Portland, events like developers demolishing existing homes and displacing residents to put 4-6 story condo developments, disappearing local businesses that can’t afford rising rents and community amenities like food cart pods that are being kicked out of the lots they helped revitalized are just some of the injustices people are feeling. Do people who don’t happen to have millions of dollars or a big…

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Tweet Last night I finally watched the movie Elysium by South African director Neill Blomkamp. Besides falling back on typical meaningless violence and starting plot lines that were never fully explored, the sci-fi movie had a great premise. It posed a world where the “have nots”, mostly composed of hispanics and black people, lived in the detritus of blighted urban landscapes wracked by air pollution, poverty and little access to medical care and the “haves” lived on a space station that was mostly made up of resorts and golf courses and every home was equipped by a miraculous healing machine that…

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June 12, 2014

What We Lose When We Lose a Food Cart Pod

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Portland is the birthplace of the food cart pod,  a cluster of food carts on an empty lot, usually a parking lot. Food cart pods have become a fixture in the city and new ones seem to be popping up all the time. But more and more, as the development craze is taking over neighborhoods, old and established food cart pods are disappearing too. It’s true that the whole premise of food carts is that they are temporary. Food carts are often used to revitalize a barren empty lot. In a way, they are a victim of their own…

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Tweet Not unlike women in Saudi Arabia that are banned from riding their bikes in public today, at one time women in the US faced the same kind of resistance to biking as well. The first drop frame bicycles to make it easier for women in skirts to ride came about in the 1890s. But at the same time, male doctors decried the overexertion to delicate female constitutions that was caused by bicycling. And women who rode bikes were often depicted as a little bit crazy and wild. Bicycles were even accused of deflowering younger women, causing spontaneous orgasms, encouraging…

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Tweet The Steel Bridge is my favorite bridge in Portland. Did you know that it was built to make it easier for the railroad to get across the Willamette River? Did you know there was a first version of the Steel Bridge built about 20 years before the one we see today? Did you know that the original bridge was the first on the West Coast to use steel for its primary structure? Here are 10 fun facts about the making of the Steel Bridge we know and love today: 1. Before the Steel Bridge was constructed, crossing the Willamette…

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Tweet Imagine a fake Mona Lisa hanging at the Louvre next to authentic masterpieces. People with an untrained eye (that would be most people) would have no idea that it was fake, they would think it was real. And what if it was painted by a company standing to profit from making you believe that what you’re seeing is the real thing? What is wrong with this situation? What is wrong is that it is a lie. It is a deception. It is making people believe something that is not true, that they are gazing upon the real, authentic masterpiece,…

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Tweet According to some of the comments I received on my article yesterday, Gentrification Hits Home: My Rent Goes Up and the $8 Sundae at Salt & Straw, I AM the problem that I am facing – being priced out of my cute studio near Hawthorne. Because I chose to move to Portland seeking a walkable lifestyle, I am displacing native Oregonians. I guess I should have just stayed in the apartment building in Maputo, Mozambique, the place where my family lived when I was born to avoid displacing other people. But if you go further back than that, I…

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Tweet Last week I heard a shuffle at my front door and saw that my building manager was slipping a notice under my door. I opened it only to read that my rent was being raised by 10%! I have lived in this cute little studio in the coveted Sunnyside Neighborhood in inner Southeast Portland for just over a year now. During this time, my rent has gone up a total of 14%. If it continues at this pace, I’ll have to find another place to live because I’ll be priced out of my very walkable, very centrally-located neighborhood. The…

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Tweet Subversion: An attempt to transform the established social order and its structures of power, authority, and hierarchy. Subversion (Latin subvertere: overthrow) refers to a process by which the values and principles of a system in place, are contradicted or reversed. – Wikipedia Did you know that women in Saudi Arabia are not only banned from driving, but they are also banned from riding bicycles in public areas? A Saudi official says “women may not use the bikes for transportation but “only for entertainment” and that they should shun places where young men gather “to avoid harassment,” according to Al-Jazeera….

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