Posts Tagged ‘community’

January 05, 2011

The Musical Instrument Museum – A Great Cultural Treasure in Phoenix

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet The Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) has been in the news a lot lately. In fact, it was featured on NPR today. Last week I had the pleasure of personally visiting the Musical Instrument Museum with my out of town family and I absolutely loved it. The building and the surrounding landscaping are fantastic, but that’s not why I love this museum. I love this museum because it celebrates, respects and cherishes every culture in the world in a state that can easily be considered a little xenophobic after the passage of SB 1070. Having a varied cultural background myself,…

December 29, 2010

Reverse Lanes Place Cars Above Community

by: Yuri Artibise

Tweet Today’s post is by the avid urbanist, community activist and my friend, Yuri Artibise. Yuri Artibise—aka the Incurable Urbanist—has spent the past four years creating community in the urban desert that is better known as Phoenix. Through his Yurbanism brand, Yuri explores the ‘Y’ of urbanism by sharing ways to make our cities more livable, community-oriented places one block at a time. Find out more at yuriartibise.com. On December 14th Phoenix City Council voted 5-1 (with 2 absences) to accept the report of the Ad Hoc Task Force on Reverse Lanes. (A summary of the report is found at…

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…

September 08, 2010

Engineered Shade is a Poor Substitute for a Vibrant Urban Forest

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet As I’ve discussed in the previous weeks on the Wednesday Phoenix Tree and Shade Masterplan series, the first step outlined in the Masterplan to restore our urban forest is Raising Awareness. The second is Preserve, Protect and Increase. Today I’ll be talking about the third and final step towards the Masterplan’s 2030 goal of a 25% canopy coverage in Phoenix – Sustainable, Maintainable Infrastructure. The goal of this step, according to the Masterplan, is to “Treat the urban forest as infrastructure to ensure that trees and engineered shade are an integral part of the city’s planning and development process”. …

September 06, 2010

Greg Stanton on Sustainable Economic Development in Phoenix

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet About three weeks ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Deputy Attorney General Greg Stanton and talking with him about a sustainable Phoenix, not only in the environmental sense, but in the economic sense as well. Mr. Stanton is currently working for Attorney General Terry Goddard and is working in support of Mr. Goddard’s gubernatorial race. But he is also seriously thinking about running for Mayor in 2011. Today’s post features Mr. Stanton’s positions on economic development, City North and future growth in Phoenix, among some other things. Stay tuned for the rest of the interview in…

September 01, 2010

Developing a Tree Fund is Crucial to the Future of Phoenix’s Urban Forest

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Today’s post is the fifth installment of the Wednesday Phoenix Tree and Shade Masterplan Series. Today’s installment is about the second step outlined to implement the Masterplan – Preserve, Protect and Increase. As you might recall, Raising Awareness was the first step which I discussed two weeks ago. The final step is Sustainable and Maintainable Infrastructure and that will be the subject of next week’s installment. The goal of the Preserve, Protect and Increase phase is to “Preserve, protect and increase the quality and quantity of trees and vegetation, especially large shade trees in appropriate areas” according to the…

August 27, 2010

10 Things You Should Know about the Upcoming Parking Lot at the Sahara Hotel

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet 1. The City used funds from the Downtown Phoenix Hotel Corporation to buy the Sahara building. Apparently part of this deal was the temporary use of the site as a parking lot for the Sheraton Hotel. This is the “done deal” City Manager David Cavazos was talking about. 2. When several community members suggested the lot become a park or a green space, Jeremy Legg, the City applicant for the parking use permit, mentioned the Civic Space Park is just a block away. Wait, so we can have TOO MANY green spaces, but never enough parking lots? 3. The…

August 25, 2010

Planting the Right Tree in the Right Place and Other Keys to a Healthy Urban Forest

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Last week, in the third installment of the series on the Tree and Shade Masterplan, I promised to talk about steps 2 and 3 in the implementation of the plan. But I’ll talk about those things next Wednesday and this is why: just a few hours ago I had lunch with the authors of the marvelous Tree and Shade Masterplan – Ken Vonderscher, Richard v-C Adkins, and Lysistrata Hall – and I learned so much from them that I wanted to share it with you today, while it’s fresh on my mind. Ken, Richard and Lysistrata all work for…

August 23, 2010

City Traffic Engineers Agree Phoenix is Not a Bike-Friendly Community

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet I had the pleasure of speaking with Kerry Wilcoxon, the Traffic Engineer in charge of Safety in Neighborhood Traffic and Joe Perez, the Bicycle Coordinator at the City of Phoenix a week and a half ago at Giant Coffee. I asked them why we don’t have the necessary bike infrastructure in place to make biking a viable mode of transportation in Phoenix and what the City is doing about it. In today’s post Kerry and Joe talk about how Phoenix was originally planned around the car and why although this is a very hard thing to change, there is…

August 10, 2010

Why Your Walk Score is More Important than Granite Countertops

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Our new tenant, Theresa Devine, an interactive arts professor at ASU who just moved here from Chicago was telling me about Walk Score yesterday, a website that generates “a number between 0 and 100 that measures the walkability of any address”. She’s in the market to buy a house in Phoenix, our duplex is just a stop on her journey, and is using this site to determine what neighborhood she wants to live in permanently. She’s living proof that people moving to Phoenix are seeking walkability. In fact, Walk Score claims that there is a dollar value attached to…