“Beasts,” a hard-knock ecological fairy tale about the disappearing Louisiana bayou cultures and coastline, highlights the fragility of the region’s hurricane defenses and the resulting devastation of communities living on the flooding margins.
Recent Posts
Electric Streetcars: Back to the Urban Future
The movement toward revitalization of downtown areas in the United States with streetcars brings 19th century urbanism together with 21st century sustainability, despite the usual fossil fueled detractors.
Dirty Realism: The Anti-Social Satire of Charles Bukowski
I go outside – and all up and down the street – the green armies shoot color – like an everlasting 4th of July, – and I too seem to swell inside, – a kind of unknown bursting, – a feeling, perhaps, that there isn’t any – enemy – anywhere
Chinese Mega-Cities Contrasted with Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities”
Rapid industrialization in China has caused a massive migration to crowded, faceless and polluted urban mega-cities of 10 million residents or more. They should consider Italo Calvino’s utopian “Invisible Cities” to rethink the role of imagination in urban planning.
Gonzovision 1970s: Hunter S. Thompson on the American Dream
“America could have been a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race. Instead, we just moved in here and destroyed the place from coast to coast like killer snails. Everybody wants power over a country that’s had it’s day.”
Adams on Kerouac: The Buddha’s First Noble Truth Unveiled at Big Sur
John Adams’ “The Dharma at Big Sur,” composed for the opening of LA’s Disney Hall, references Jack Kerouac’s evocation of the first of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths in microtones, celebrating the freedom of the California coast at Big Sur.
Detroit Works: Urban Farming and Reforestation as Neighborhood Preservation
Detroit Future City, the long-term planning vision for the long-rusting Motor City, embraces the urban farming, permaculture, and ecological urbanism movements seen in cities across the United States, to chart the way to more a prosperous and sustainable future.