field activity

Shaven heads, naked bodies, ringing bells, and chants of Shame! will not stop climate change. In fact, I think that sequence from Game of Thrones is evidence that most public shaming is either retributive or self-aggrandizing. Either way, the travel shaming movement is fundamentally misguided. As Seth Kugel quotes in the New York Times: “The more we try to change other people’s behavior — especially by making them feel bad — the less likely we will be to succeed,” Edward Maibach of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University told me. He does get at the heart of the matter later a moment later: Instead — whether it’s global climate change or local vacation rental laws — the biggest impact a person can have comes from pressuring governments to address travel-related problems on a large scale. Likewise, so does engaging friends and family in conversations about those policies, and supporting research, advocacy organizations and candidates who take your i...

Tonight's AIA Dallas Architecture on Tap focused on the topic of resilience (or resiliency). The Communities by Design committee put together a diverse panel, featuring Krista Nightengale from The Better Block, Tom Reisenbichler of Perkins+Will and David Whitley from DRW Planning Studio. Maggie Parker of the TREC Community Fund moderated. In my experience, resilience has been notoriously difficult to define and this discussion proved little different. Maggie offered the definition of the Rockefeller Foundation's (now defunct) 100 Resilient Cities initiative to open the discussion: “the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to survive, adapt, and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience.” I found the conversation that followed to be interesting, but a bit too wide ranging to lead to any specific or actionable insights. David mentioned floating infrastructure in New Orleans. Tom reached...