Day: November 30, 2007

Don’t complain about the game. Change the game you’re playing.

Don’t complain about the game. Change the game you’re playing.: The people who insist on telling you that you can’t are often actually saying I can’t. For whatever reason: fear, self-doubt, teachers, managers or parents who quash them (whom they let squash them), a complete lack of belief in their own power, a kind of sublimated jealousy and rage because you succeed where, of course, they “can’t.”

It’s true that this stuff sometimes comes straight from the mouths of people who care (or purport to care) about you, your business, your product, your career, whatever. They may think they’re trying to do right by you, but I’ve found that the people who say such things are afraid of life… not just for themselves, but for you, too. They’re afraid you might fail because they’re so horribly afraid of failing. They’re afraid that you might succeed, too, because what kind of light would that cast on their failure to do exactly what you’re doing right?[Great piece on success, failure, and making stuff happen.]
Source: (24)Slash7

Creating People-Friendly Streets

Creating People-Friendly Streets (Gotham Gazette, November 2007): Against this backdrop, many West Side residents and elected officials believe the time has come to reclaim the streets as public space. In November, several hundred people filled the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan to hear Jan Gehl, the Danish urban planner renowned for humanizing the streets of Copenhagen, London and dozens of other cities. Gehl’s talk launched the Upper West Side Streets Renaissance, a campaign to radically reconfigure the streets led by Transportation Alternatives, the Project for Public Spaces and the Open Planning Project.

Gehl is working as a consultant for the transportation department. With a team of volunteers, he conducted studies of how the streets are used in various parts of the city and made recommendations for supporting “walkability” in public life. [Go, Go!, GO! (Am I enthusiastically for all this? Mmmm, yes!)]