Damian Holmes

New York Times recently published When Parks Must Rely on Private Money by DIANE CARDWELL concerning the struggles of cities to fund the construction and maintenance of parks throughout the USA. Many parks are funded through selling of land or revenues generated by carparks or taxes from new nearby developments and others are funded by [...]

Susan Szenasy posted on Metropolis an article titled “United We Stand” in which she recalls some government officials giving encouragement at a recent NeoCon East annual trade show that there is “a new day for government design”. Szeasy goes on to talk about the importance to design of the recent $5.5 billion allocation to General [...]

Recently, I attended the JUCCCE Green Ideas Lab in Shanghai. The event was 3 x 8 minute presentations followed by break out sessions in small groups. I thought it would be good to share the ‘light bulb’ moments that I had during and on the way home from the event.
IDEA 1: No matter how big [...]

I just came back from Green Drinks in Shanghai and there was a mix of Chinese and Foreigners (about 30/70) and it was interesting to see the crowd. It has grow immensely since the first green drinks last year at URBN hotel when about 25 people jammed into a room. Tonight the presentations were from [...]

The idea of returning Detroit to farm land is an interesting idea that was recently covered in New Geography(DETROIT: URBAN LABORATORY AND THE NEW AMERICAN FRONTIER, Nov. 4) and New York Times(Plowing Detroit Into Farmland blog post Nov. 9 based on New Geography article). The New Geography article reviews the size and scale of Detroit [...]

The decline of large USA industrial cities has received  media attention recently in articles such as the Forbes Fastest Declining cities, which have caused a great amount of emotion and despair among the named city’s citizens. This was evident from the city meeting last weekend in Dayton, Ohio reported by Wall Street Journal – ‘Fastest [...]