Dina Mehta lost a cousin in Gujarat last week in a tragic car accident. In traveling back to be with her family, she reflected on the Indian Joint Family, a family structure where everyone lives under the same roof, but the structure of the house is flexible and malleable to reflect the relationships in the dwelling: This is a classic Indian Joint Family – man and wife, three sons and their wives and children. Individual quarters built for each of the sons and their families – yet under one roof with common kitchen, dining and washing areas. Provisions made to …
Out of Davenport Iowa, comes Vital Communities, a collection of resources on new urbanism, sustainability and creating community. It’s a vast resource well worth exploring and it comes with this introduction: Cities and towns throughout the United States are struggling with urban sprawl, declining neighborhoods, and deserted downtowns, but a new wave of interest in revitalizing our communities is sweeping the country. The resources on this site attempt to document the work being done in some cities and towns and to provide information that can inspire and assist other communities in reinventing their surroundings. It IS possible to create robust …
I love this, and I hope he keeps it up. This is the personal website of our new Prime Minister, Paul Martin. On the site is a blog which has been sleeping since October, but there is also Paul Martin with Flat Mark, a photo montage of the new Prime Minister going about his day with a cardboard cut out doll called Flat Mark. He even poses with Flat Mark as he is waiting to be called into the Governer-General’s residence to be sworn in as Canada’s 21st prime minister. It is about time our political leaders had blogs, and …
Over the past few months, several people have been exploring the applications of Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language to endeavours other than architecture. Peter Lindberg has been concerning himself with the application of patterns to software development. The folks at BlueOxen have been looking at Patterns of community building and collaboration, Mike Lee blogged patterns of introducing change into organizations last summer, and Michael Herman and I took a shot at defining some patterns of Open Space Technology based on The Nature of Order. We’re not done yet. (I have to say that pattern languages have not helped the patternlanguage.com people …