Posts Tagged ‘blooming rock’

December 08, 2010

What Cohousing can Teach Us about Urban Planning

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet About a year ago, I was asked to be a part of a cohousing effort here in Phoenix and everything that I learned about community-oriented design inspired me tremendously and has informed much of my thinking about neighborhoods and our city. Cohousing is a very specific model of community living that was originally created in Denmark. A cohousing community usually consists of around 12 to 36 units, is designed by a participatory process led by future residents, has extensive common facilities usually in the form of a common house and is ultimately managed by its residents. But there are…

November 30, 2010

Hedonistic Travel: The Pleasures of Carlessness

by: Sarah Davies

Tweet Today’s post is by Sarah Davies, who’s visiting Phoenix for about a year or so from the UK as a researcher at ASU. I first met Sarah at Critical Mass and we exchanged a few friendly words while trying to ride two abreast and to avoid the nearby speeding vehicles and falling in the gutter. During our short and understandably distracted conversation, I found out Sarah doesn’t have a car, she lives in Downtown and works at the ASU Main Campus. Intrigued, we followed up our brief riding encounter with a coffee at Lux a few weeks later. It…

November 23, 2010

Finally, Sustainable Landscape Standards for the Southwest!

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Janet Waibel, landscape architect and owner of Waibel & Associates Landscape Architecture, has done something remarkable, something no one has every done before. She has written down and compiled best practices and standards for landscape management in the southwest, in particular, the Valley of the Sun. Why is this such a remarkable feat? Simply because no one has ever written such a comprehensive and consensus-based text on this subject. Our climate is so unique that our landscape has very specific and different needs than anywhere else in the country. Sure, over the years people have figured out how best…

November 16, 2010

Goldwater Institute Standing in the Way of Arizona’s Solar Future

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet From the Phoenix Business Journal today: The Goldwater Institute is again trying to overturn the state’s renewable energy standard. The group is in Arizona Court of Appeals today arguing that the Arizona Corporation Commission overstepped its bounds setting a standard that requires utilities to have 15 percent of their power produced by renewable resources by 2025. The case, Miller v. ACC, focuses on a surcharge to Arizona Public Service customers monthly bills and argues that the ACC breached its constitutional mandate in establishing the requirement. A Maricopa County Superior Court judge originally ruled the ACC acted within its authority…

November 08, 2010

Eric Corey Freed Talks about the Urgent Need for Green Building

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Eric Corey Freed, licensed architect, LEED ap practices a very special brand of architecture called organic architecture out of his firm organicarchitect in San Francisco. Early in his career, Eric studied under an apprentice of Frank Lloyd Wright, gaining an appreciation for and adopting Wright’s philosophy of organic design. In his own practice, he has also become deeply involved in ecological and environmentally responsible architecture drawing from ancient design principles and new technological innovations. He has co-developed the Sustainability Programs at the Academy of Art University and the University of California Berkeley Extension. Eric is the author of four…

November 02, 2010

ASU and the City

by: J Seth Anderson

Tweet Today’s post is by J Seth Anderson, a fantastic writer, journalist and fellow urban advocate for the Valley. Seth (first name is John, but he has always gone by Seth) is not a Phoenix native but dang close! His favorite time of year is summer in Phoenix. Seth lives in a mid-century house in downtown Tempe although he lives and breathes downtown Phoenix historic preservation and development. He writes about downtown Phoenix, historic preservation, politics, and LGBT issues on his own blog Boy Meets Blog. Seth also writes for the new Downtown Phoenix Journal magazine debuting this Thursday, November…

October 27, 2010

A Design Review of Lola on Central

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Have you been to Lola Coffee on Central? I usually go there for meetings because it’s quieter than a lot of other coffee shops. The design of the space has never struck me as very special because there is a certain intimacy that’s missing from it. But today, when I took a closer look, I discovered that there are some cool design elements in the coffee shop. Just as a clarification, there is a Lola in Downtown, on Roosevelt and 4th Ave. Now that Lola has achieved the intimacy and richness that Lola on Central is missing, but I…

October 26, 2010

Small Steps Towards a Sustainable Remodel

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet A few months ago, when the rental unit at the Blooming Rock duplex 3 Palms became available, I got a call from a woman named Theresa who was very interested in the place. But she stipulated that she needed the lease to be on a month-to-month basis because she was moving here from Chicago and wanted to buy a house for the long term, instead of renting. Normally I wouldn’t entertain the idea of a month-to-month lease, but I was intrigued when she told me that she just got a tenured position at a university in a very interesting…

October 15, 2010

Action Item: Love Dogs, Not Cars

by: Sean Sweat

Tweet Today on Blooming Rock we have a special Friday post by Sean Sweat about future plans for the Sahara Motel site that is slated to become a parking lot, but Sean has a better idea. Sean Sweat, aka @PhxDowntowner, is the Treasurer of St Croix Villas in the heart of downtown and an MIT-trained transportation professional. His professional focus is supply chain & logistics. His personal focus is pedestrianism, public transit, and multi-modal interactions. INTRODUCTION St Croix Villas needs your help. If you like any of the following things, you’ll want to help us: • Downtown Vibrancy • Pedestrianism…

October 11, 2010

Biking Infrastructure as Sign of Modernity and Progress

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet “Bruges is a biking city” declared the woman at the information counter at the train station when we arrived from Brussels. I found out first hand that she wasn’t kidding. Biking is an integral part of the infrastructure in Bruges, which is a tiny city in Belgium that has gotten a few big things right. And one of those things is their bicycle culture. Right from the get go, when we walked out of the train station, I saw a sea of bicycles parked outside: The woman at the information counter would later tell me that locals bike to…