I thought this was an interesting article. There is a fairly new program at the University of Oregon (where I graduated from) called the Sustainable Cities Initiative that takes a large number of students from a variety of disciplines (public planning, architecture, law, economics, etc) and then works with a city for a whole year to develop a broad-based understanding of the community and its challenges and try to design far reaching potential solutions to some of those issues.
This year they have 600 students in 25 classes who will devote 80,000 hours to working with Salem, Oregon (where I grew up). Salem was really kind of a depressing place to grow up in but I still have a lot of friends there, so I'm hoping that they come up with some interesting ideas. Overall, I think that the idea behind the program is great. I think that cities tend to look at individual projects as they come up but don't necessarily have a lot of strategic planning that spans a variety of concerns. I know that all the ideas won't end up coming to fruition but I love the big picture thinking combined with practical small-scale implementation. I'll be curious to see how it all shakes out. http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/08/23/23greenwire-in-oregon-students-seek-key-to-a-sustainable-c-87835.html Cheers, Judah ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:326334 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
