dkSez : : : : : : Don Kahle’s blog

Architects and urban planners are beginning rediscover “old and improved.” Building standards are beginning to calculate and consider the energy that went into building the original structure as something worth saving. The future is calling AAA to reuse the past.

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The city has gotten admirably creative about swapping with Springfield or with Lane County to achieve shared goals, but this issue demands no fancy footwork. A nickel lost by our schools is a nickel paid to our schools. Period.

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Local designers have the skills to build beautiful buildings, but they won’t get built without the permission of the clients. When it comes to publicly financed buildings, that’s you and me.

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Young people settle in places where they see opportunity. Saturday Market provides that when it allows anyone to hang out a custom-crafted shingle, even if it’s made of cardboard and crayons. You can start a business in Eugene for less than $100. If you have the drive and the wits, you can succeed.

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When it was built in the 1980s, there was hope that it would spark redevelopment, but its central downtown location didn’t attract commerce, and the adjacent conference hotel has probably not improved so much as stayed the same.

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We need a deregulated taxi system. Something less like a limousine service and more like codified hitch-hiking. Where better than Eugene to test a safer version of the transportation choice of the 1960s? I’ve seen it in revival recently.

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If you abandon hope that the original problem will shape the solutions to be discovered, fecundity explodes. Intellectual Ventures operates on the premise that good ideas are a dime a dozen.

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ODOT reached out to two communities of local designers, and then something unique happened. ODOT asked artists to help them, and then they asked architects to help too. Rather than run these two conversations in parallel, they decided to fold them together.

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Citizens catch a romantic movie and pick up a marriage certificate without moving their car. Dog tags upstairs, dog grooming downstairs. Death certificates above florists. Most importantly, people could believe that government doesn’t exist at all if that suited them best. Our city government would move beyond transparency to invisibility.

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That sprawl-friendly model of development turns out to be rooted in a shared psychosis that is uniquely and pervasively American. It’s drawn from a sitcom-inspired image of family and community that no longer exists, if it ever did.

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