by admin | Nov 1, 2015 | Renovation, Resilience
Daylight Savings Time has expired, giving me an extra hour this morning right after the goblins of Halloween have disappeared—you know, those kids in costumes (mostly accompanied by parents, some also in costumes) who depleted our supply of Mini Rolos last night. I...
by admin | Aug 29, 2015 | Blogging, Disaster, History, Resilience
For the first time since launching this blog, I have invited a guest author, Stephen D. Villavaso, a New Orleans native, urban planner, and land-use attorney, to comment on today’s tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall on the Gulf Coast. I was heavily...
by admin | Aug 23, 2015 | Climate, Economic development, Environment, Infrastructure, Resilience, Urban Planning, Water
For a number of years, the American Society of Civil Engineers has been issuing an annual report card on the condition of the nation’s infrastructure. Generally speaking, those grades have not been good: In 2013, the nation’s grade point average was a D+....
by admin | Aug 9, 2015 | Activism, Books, Civil rights, Education, Literature, Personal history, Political philosophy, Resilience, Writing
Just in case anyone out there is unduly impressed with my intelligence, I have a revelation: I flunked calculus in my first quarter of my freshman year in college. I was attending Cleveland State University on Kiwanis scholarship money, no less. Not that I really...
by admin | Jul 28, 2015 | Blogging, Climate, Disaster, Disaster policy, Economics, Education, Geography, Resilience, Urban Planning
Interdisciplinary disaster studies are still relatively new, compared to long-standing fields like geology or even psychology. I spent last week (July 19-23) in Broomfield, Colorado, first at the Natural Hazards Workshop, sponsored by the University of Colorado’s...
by admin | Jul 12, 2015 | Chicago, Climate, Education, Environment, Public policy, Public safety, Resilience, Science, Urban Planning, Water
I grew up in suburban Cleveland. After a seven-year hiatus in Iowa and briefly in Nebraska, my wife’s home state, we ended up in Chicago. I am unquestionably a Midwesterner with most of my life lived near the Great Lakes. It will therefore not be surprising that for...
