Rach > Recent Status Updates

“The most effective community activists are those who regularly revel in the pleasures of their neighborhood.”

“Define the boundaries of your neighborhood. It’s hard to maintain a sense of community when you don’t know where it starts or ends.”

- have an identifiable center
- perhaps a landmark that is incorporated in the name

“Traffic calming… to assert pedestrians’ inalienable right to cross the street.”

Guerrilla traffic calming? Act first and wait for them to react

“….cars and trucks don’t have exclusive ownership of our streets. Streets are a shared public space that also belong to people on foot and bicycles…”

“Never underestimate the power of a meal”

“Any time neighbors sit down to a meal together, it makes a difference.”

“Cemeteries should be seen as public gardens where anyone can come to respectfully appreciate the glory of nature…”

“City folks have always been viewed as suspicious, going all the way back to Thomas Jefferson’s exultation of the yeoman farmer as the repository of virtue and the champion of democracy.”

“…suburban development will continue its destructive march…”

“…creating compact and congenial urban neighborhoods that are safe, lively, and attractive places is an environmental issue.”

“Take care of the neighborhood the same way you take care of your own property.”

Use it or lose it applies to neighborhood businesses!

Recipe for an American Renaissance
- eat in dinners
- ride trains
- put a porch on your house
- shop on Main Street
- live in a walkable community

“The best parks attract people of all ages.”

“Neighborhood safety is about more than crime.”

community in the streets > police presence, surveillance, hostile infrastructure

“Many standard crime prevention strategies actually thwart efforts to improve the neighborhood by reinforcing these negative perceptions.”

“One of the best investments you can make in your community is to expect the best from people.”

“Fear of crime is often a bigger problem than crime itself.”

“Some historians have noted that the gradual shift of outdoor life at home from the front porch to the back patio is a key element in our declining sense of community.”

“Anywhere pets thrive, people will thrive too.”

Every neighborhood should have 10 great places - David Marcucci

Human civilization developed from an endless series of spontaneous exchanges between people. The more opportunity there are for exchanges, the more rich and satisfying life is for people in that society. - David Engwicht

“The harried, isolating nature of modern life appears to be minimizing our capacity for human contact.”

"The answer to low cost housing, it seems to me, is to make a break with a "standard of living" that makes us slaves to centralized decision-making and control, to an economy whose values are the magnitude of production and consumption. The dollar is not a reasonable measure of the quality of life or the quality of place."

“The eccentrics in a society, whether self-taught or not, whether consciously so or not, whether educated or not, whether recognized or not, can help provide the variety we crave, and the challenges that help us see the full possibilities of our lives.”

“…happiness comes from learning to deprive external events of the power to trigger negative emotions in you.”

“There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”

“And we can’t confess to make ourselves seem better than those who haven’t recognized their need to confess yet.”

“A society that colludes viciously oppress a group of people, century after century, is going to hear the echoes of that sin for a very long time.”