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Like many other cities, Baltimore has set a  goal to end homelessness within 10 years . Baltimore will be near the end of this time-frame when yet another Mayor will be elected  next year and there is no indication that homelessness in the city will end any time soon. Homeless camp in Baltimore under the freeway ramps On any given night, at least 3,002 Baltimore city residents sleep on the streets, in shelters, in cars, or other such locations not meant to be home. Of these, four in five are African-American, two-thirds are men, and about half are between the ages of 36 and 50. The 2007 Homeless Census found that 1,000 Baltimoreans meet the federal definition of “chronically homeless,” meaning they have been homeless for over one year or have had at least four episodes of homelessness in three years. (From the 2008 Baltimore plan) It is estimated ( source ) that annually about 3.7 million Americans will experience homelessness. The goal to eradicate homelessness has prove...

Holiday pop-up installation: bakery Pop-up installations are all the rage. What is more pop-up than an open air market? It is in the nature of such markets to be not there one day and there another, bringing additional people into public spaces. The open air market is an altogether excellent place-making device. Like Russian dolls that nest inside each other, markets can create streets within a street, plazas on a plaza and a village inside a city. The booths and stalls are the buildings and stores, the spaces in between the streets and the intersections become small squares. Seasonal farmers markets have spread like wildfire all across America and no surprise that this popularity coincides with the general renaissance of cities during the past decade or so. A city within a city: The Weihnachtsmarkt Stuttgart on the Marktplatz It comes as a surprise, then, that the European tradition of Christmas markets has not caught on in the US in the same way, even if there is a recent wave of Ger...

Introduction : Diminished city government, underfunded and understaffed planning departments, the short attention spans of citizens and politicians, waning trust in government generally, and an accelerating speed of change – these are some of the trends that make public agencies increasingly less likely to be the source and originators for viable innovative plans. Instead communities, politicians, institutions and even public agencies themselves look beyond the familiar faces when it comes to solutions for intricate urban problems.   In the fast paced world, instant planning is highly attractive, anything that gets results fast, avoids employment but still allows stakeholder involvement and public participation is welcome.  The out-of-town expert, not burdened by local allegiances and networks, gains a kind of allure that way, even beyond the fact that the prophets are never accepted in their own hometown.  A prophet is not without honor except in his own town a...

Night sky and meteors Light and darkness have been in an eternal battle from the beginning of humanity. As in good and evil, in enlightenment and the dark ages, all in all leaving darkness disadvantaged. Flying over the United States at night, one can get the strong impression that light wins against darkness, energy conservation and the dark skies movement notwithstanding. In this post we will leave those philosophical, ethical and prejudicial questions aside to shed some darkness on light as a man-made product that has become a menace to the environment as easily visible by the lumens or foot candles put out by parking lots and gas stations. The spread of light is much reinforced by the rapidly spreading proliferation of LED and laser lights that allow illumination in a previously unknown breadth of applications and not only during the holiday season. We can't avoid the allusions altogether. What with the forces of darkness who forced the Lyon festival of lights this year to...