Archive for the ‘urbanism’ Category

December 22, 2016

14 of my Favorite Things About Portland, Oregon

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet In early 2013 Portland was like a new love interest that I had fallen hard for. I was enamored with just about everything in the city. I gained 10lbs just cause I wanted to try all the food and I couldn’t get enough of the Blue Star Donuts, the Waffle Window and Lauretta Jeans Pie Shop. I traipsed around the city taking photographs of the gorgeous flowers, the beautiful bridges, and the many group bike rides I went on. Four years later, just like any love interest, the shine has worn off and I’ve settled into a calmer, less…

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Tweet In our private property culture, community property is considered un-American and is akin to socialsm or communism. But despite the national rhetoric of every man for himself and pulling yourself up from the bootstraps, the reality is, we all need each other at the end of the day and we can’t go far without the help of our community. We all need a helping hand sometimes, whether that be because we’re just starting a baking business and we can’t afford our own commercial kitchen, or because we simply can’t afford to buy our toddler the latest toys, just to…

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Tweet If you live in a tiny house on wheels, you may be woken up in the middle of the night and asked to vacate your house. That’s because living in a tiny house on wheels (THOW) is illegal in most of Portland, unless it is parked on an RV lot. It is perfectly legal to park tiny houses on wheels in a lot of places, including someone’s back yard. But living there is a whole other story. Why Tiny Homes on Wheels are an Important Part of Available Housing Stock: With Portland’s housing crisis, the particular issue of tiny…

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October 22, 2015

5 Reasons to Build an ADU

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet [I originally wrote this article for the Communitecture blog, where I work as an architect.] What do accessory dwelling units (ADU) have to do with Portland’s state of emergency for housing? Everything. Accessory dwellings are the great compromise between adding density and preserving the single-family fabric that Portlanders have come to love and depend on. They are a great answer to adding housing options in the city without giving up much of the character that makes Portland what it is. [Side Note for Those Not Familiar with ADUs: What the heck is an accessory dwelling unit? It’s what a…

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Tweet Portland Mayor Charlie Hales has declared a state of emergency for housing and homelessness in the city. With a vacancy rate of 2.5-3.2%, less than half of that in a healthy housing market, and a 30% increase in rents in that last 5 years, it certainly feels like a state of emergency to everyone from the homeless to the working poor to artists and even to middle class professionals. City Club held the first of a two-part forum on Friday to address the issue of affordable housing. On the panel were Israel Bayer, executive director of Street Roots, Martha…

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Tweet It’s not easy to be a Muslim in America. After 9-11 Muslims have been a target of discrimination and suspicion and have been painted as “anti-American”. As recently as last month there was an armed anti-Islam demonstration at an Arizona mosque. Continued violence perpetrated by extremists around the world has put Muslims in America, who themselves have nothing to do with that violence, in a position of constantly having to defend themselves and their religion. I was raised as a Muslim, but no longer practice. But my family still does and I very much still feel connected to the…

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Tweet If you’ve seen the curvy and colorful cob structures around the city of Portland, chances are good that you’re seeing the work of the Village Building Convergence (VBC), an annual placemaking festival organized by City Repair which is celebrating its 15th year. The 10-day festival is underway this week and its going stronger than ever. It’s main mission is to facilitate hands-on volunteer labor towards making various community-building projects around the city become a reality. This year’s projects include 22 intersection painting projects, 8 landscaping/gardening projects and 9 building projects, such as making earthen plaster walls for buildings, cob…

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March 09, 2015

Designing Safe Cities for Women

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet In honor of International Women’s Day, today’s post is about designing safe cities for women. Even today, many women in the world don’t feel safe, welcome or comfortable being in the public realm. In many places women are still relegated to the confines of their homes with no place in public for them. In places like Saudi Arabia, India, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and other countries, a woman is considered unvirtuous (and a target for harassment or worse) if she even dares to appear in public by herself. Even in cosmopolitan, bustling urban centers like Bombay, “women are at best…

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February 02, 2015

5 Ways to Add Density without Building High-Rises

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Portland and many other cities around the country are facing the problem of adding more housing and infrastructure as more and more people move into the city. In short, they are being forced to densify, to fit more people into a limited amount of space. Portland has an urban growth boundary, so density is a specially pressing problem in the face of a projected population boom of 725,000 additional people in 20 years. The threat of people moving in with nowhere to house them has led to large swaths of the historic fabric of urban neighborhoods to be destroyed and…

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Tweet Today’s post is by guest contributor Bob Graham: 2015 has brought to downtown Phoenix new multifamily development projects that have awakened and alarmed local stakeholders. Any of these developments on their own would probably have ruffled a few feathers but then continued on to completion would be just one more minor erosion of urban fabric that we would adjust to. However when they all come up at once, the challenges of maintaining our progress towards a revitalized and sustainable downtown become all too stark. Current Events: Problem Projects The three projects that have caught the community’s attention are, from west…

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