Posts Tagged ‘social capital’

June 04, 2015

The Village Building Convergence – an Antidote to Gentrification

by: Taz Loomans

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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September 25, 2014

7 Reasons Why High-Rises Kill Livability

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet What are you supposed to do when you’re the city of Portland and millions of people are supposed to move into your city in the coming decades and you have an urban growth boundary? Build up, right? To a certain extent yes, but not above the fifth floor, says world-renown architect Jan Gehl. “I would say that anybody living over the fifth floor ought generally to be referring to the airspace authorities. You’re not part of the earth anymore, because you can’t see what’s going on on the ground and the people on the ground can’t see where you…

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June 19, 2014

How the Built Environment can Help Build or Destroy Social Capital

by: Taz Loomans

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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