I walked by a bar called the Quahog Lodge...
...I kind of thought that was a made up name.
but anyways, I'm in Newport, Rhode Island right now for the Southern New England American Planning Association yearly conference thingy. I'm having a good time.
My hostel has internet, which I wasn't expecting, so I didn't bring a cord to upload my pictures (sad face).
Like Wisconsin and Nova Scotia, Rhode Island is one of those places that I can't imagine a reason I'd ever live there, but I still really like it. Providence has a great downtown and Newport is one of the prettiest small towns I've seen in America. One of the best things about Rhode Island is that the city is the city, the towns are towns and the rural is rural (instead of varying degrees of suburb, like most of the country). I think small places (or at least places that are geographically constrained) are so much more aware of what needs to happen to protect their well-being (the Netherlands and san Francisco being two other examples). I'll write more about this when I have some pictures to post.
The conference is good. So far I've had sessions on making design a priority in affordable housing and some stuff about LID (low-impact-development), which is basically about how to build without totally upsetting the watercycle and the natural beauty of a plot (apparently Seattle, Portland and Virginia are getting really good at this stuff).
Tomorrow I've got a session where lawyers from each side of the Kelo vs. New London (eminent domain) will be speaking. It should be really interesting.
but anyways, I'm in Newport, Rhode Island right now for the Southern New England American Planning Association yearly conference thingy. I'm having a good time.
My hostel has internet, which I wasn't expecting, so I didn't bring a cord to upload my pictures (sad face).
Like Wisconsin and Nova Scotia, Rhode Island is one of those places that I can't imagine a reason I'd ever live there, but I still really like it. Providence has a great downtown and Newport is one of the prettiest small towns I've seen in America. One of the best things about Rhode Island is that the city is the city, the towns are towns and the rural is rural (instead of varying degrees of suburb, like most of the country). I think small places (or at least places that are geographically constrained) are so much more aware of what needs to happen to protect their well-being (the Netherlands and san Francisco being two other examples). I'll write more about this when I have some pictures to post.
The conference is good. So far I've had sessions on making design a priority in affordable housing and some stuff about LID (low-impact-development), which is basically about how to build without totally upsetting the watercycle and the natural beauty of a plot (apparently Seattle, Portland and Virginia are getting really good at this stuff).
Tomorrow I've got a session where lawyers from each side of the Kelo vs. New London (eminent domain) will be speaking. It should be really interesting.
4 comments:
That's a pretty conservative sounding Chesterton quote you've got there Zakcq. Not surprising since the man loathed all forms of "progressive" thought.
I actually see it as against the enlightenment ideas of the perfectablity of history through human rationalism, as opposed to more post-modernist ideas of human growth and the historical inclusionist movements.
but i guess people will always interperate things through their own mindset. (which i suppose is a point in and of itself.)
Okay, but to cull that from a statement made by Chesterton a man who despised all forms of both modernist-rationalism and post-modernist relativism (although it wasn't called that in his time) is rather curious.
i actually think (and some scholars agree) that, although it wasn't identified at the time, Chesterton was one of the intelectual forerunners of post-modernism. That's up for debate. I got the quote from a book called The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler, and i'm using it in the context that it was used. We could debate this longer, but it seems rather pointless. It's kind of like trying to decide if Plato was the first conservative or the first liberal. The labels were meaningless at the time, so take what you can from it.
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