“Urbanized is a feature-length documentary about the design of cities, which looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers. Over half the world’s population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call a city home by 2050. But while some cities are experiencing explosive growth, others are shrinking. The challenges of balancing housing, mobility, public space, civic engagement, economic development, and environmental policy are fast becoming universal concerns. Yet much of the dialogue on these issues is disconnected from the public domain. Who is allowed to shape our cities, and how do they do it? Unlike many other fields of design, cities aren’t created by any one specialist or expert. There are many contributors to urban change, including ordinary citizens who can have a great impact improving the cities in which they live. By exploring a diverse range of urban design projects around the world, Urbanized frames a global discussion on the future of cities. Urbanized is the third part of Gary Hustwit’s design film trilogy, joining Helvetica and Objectified. Urbanized is currently screening at film festivals and cinemas worldwide, with television broadcasts, and release on DVD and digital formats in early 2012.”

This was more than just a film about and for the urban design geeks among us (although we did love it).  The film tackles the sense of despair that many planners feel-that population is booming, poverty is rampant,  that our resources are scarce, that public participation is necessary, but difficult- and ends with a sense of hope.  There are many interesting innovations going on in urban design right now.  The film profiled both shining examples of cities, like Copenhagen and Bogota, but also Detroit, New Orleans, and New York City.  It clearly tackled the problems of crime and poverty from a design perspective and offered many solutions based upon the community where the problems were located.  A wonderful example of the meshing of public art and participatory planning was a street artist named Candy Chang  in New Orleans.  She was just plain tired of all the meetings and nothing visible being accomplished.  She created a public art project by lining up vinyl stickers, you know the ones that typically say “Hello, My Name Is” but instead had “I wish this was” and left sharpie pens for folks to comment.  So simple and yet profound.  Check out the website: http://iwishthiswas.cc/story/

Another take home from the film was that planning for the re-urbanization that must happen (over 50% of the worlds population will live in an urban area by 2025) was that planners, architects, public officials, and citizens must take a long view.  There needs to be a continuous implementation of a 20-30 year plan to realize some of these dreams and it must be independent of a 5 year budget cycle or a 2 year election cycle.  Major infrastructure improvements, like retrofiting rail, simply cannot be done in 2-5 years.   Unfortunately, the film did not offer suggestions on how to convince those tied to a 2-5 year time frame how to think otherwise.

This film, which incorporates history, social work, poverty, transportation and the aforementioned planning and urban design is a great film for all interested in the public process.  Should TCW bring it to Troy?  Let us know.

TROY, OH (October 6, 2011) Troy Community Works! and fourteen  different non-profit organizations around Troy have joined together to participate in the largest national day of helping others, Make A Difference Day.

Make A Difference Day is the most encompassing community service project in the nation – a celebration of neighbors helping neighbors.  Created by USA Weekend Magazine, the 20^th annual Make A Difference Day will occur on October 22, 2011 from 8:30am – 12:00pm with a volunteer recognition lunch immediately following.  On this day, across the nation, corporations, government leaders, charitable organizations, and everyday Americans will join together to make a positive impact in their communities.  The headquarters of Troy’s event will be at the First Place Christian Center located at 16 W. Franklin Street.

Volunteers will be assigned to a project at one of 14 different sites including Troy Community Works!, Partners in Hope, Bruckner Nature Center, the Troy-Miami County Library, WACO Historical Society, St. Joseph’s House, St. Patrick’s Soup Kitchen, Family Connections, Troy Main Street, Lincoln Community Center, the Miami Valley Veterans Museum, Hospice of Miami County, the Miami County Animal Shelter, and the Miami County Recovery Council.   These organizations have teamed up to host Make A Difference Day- Troy Fix It along with many other partner groups and businesses. Our Make A Difference Day project is a “Fix-It” Day centered on providing assistance with small repairs or landscaping projects for these area non-profit organizations that give so much to our community. All projects are listed on our website, www.troycommunity.com, under the “Fix it & MDD” tab. Individuals can view projects and download a volunteer form there. For individuals who are unable to volunteer on October 22, there will be a food drive held in conjunction with the Fix It day projects.  Canned food items can be dropped off at First Place to benefit the First Place Food Pantry and the St. Patrick’s Soup Kitchen.

We encourage all Trojans to come out and volunteer on October 22^rd.  Volunteers can receive a free volunteer breakfast at Panera Breads from 7am-9am and volunteer from 8:30am -12:00pm.  A volunteer lunch prepared by the Troy Altrusa Club will then be served at First Place.  Funding for this Make A Difference Day is provided by generous grants from the Troy Foundation and the Honda Foundation.  For more information on Troy’s Make A Difference Day event and how to participate as a group or individually, please contact Allison DeHart at contact@troycommunity.com.  All information on Make A Difference Day-Troy will be posted on the website: www.troycommunity.com.  Come join the fun and make a difference!

TCW has the word “sustainability” in our mission statement and part of sustainability is smart reuse of things we no longer want or need.  When I used to work in recycling I would get frustrated at how much focus everyone seemed to put on recycling things and yet spend so little time on how we can reuse things.  Reuse, by definition, means an item gets a second life.  This was clearly evidenced by my daughter crying over her outgrown princess scooter that is headed for the yard sale.  The thing that stopped her crying was the idea that another little girl will get joy from having her very own pink princess scooter.

Yard sales aren’t the only hot spots for reuse.  Everywhere you look there are deposits for reusing your things.  Goodwill, Salvation Army, and consignment shops are great for clothing and housewares.  The Lions’ Club has a wonderful program for old eyeglasses.  One of the coolest programs I’ve seen for reuse is sponsored by Nike.  Their “Nike ReUse a Shoe” program takes shoes of any brand and Nike will reuse them into tracks & playgrounds for kids in underserved areas.  Here are some other great reuse organizations that will give you a warm fuzzy for donating to a good cause.

1. Habitat for Humanity ReStore (locally Uncle Ralph’s ReStore)- takes furniture and any sort of deconstruction items.
2. Donate my Dress – formal wear for proms/bridesmaids dresses.  There is also a formal wear consignment shop in Troy that will take formal wear.
3. Books for Africa – donates books to schools, orphanages, and literacy programs in africa.  Our local goodwill and Around About Books will also take books.
4. One Warm Coat – winter coat drives.
5. Cell phones can be dropped off at our local Partners In Hope or Family Connection offices to help those who don’t have a phone.
6. Electronic & technical gadgets can be dropped off and recycled at Best Buy or check out www.digitaltips.org for information on your specific gadget.

One of the best parts of reuse, especially when it is done locally, is how it does truly build community.  By recirculating resources (aka our stuff) we may be helping someone see, remodel their home more efficiently or keeping great stuff out of the landfill.  So as you say “good riddance” to the stuff you don’t need you can also say “hello” to sustainability.

For the brainstorming part, we’d like your input on this summer’s Green Gala!  What’s the  Green Gala?  Only the best party to be held in Troy this summer.  We’re reusing this building and we’d like to invite the community to celebrate with us.  Our outreach committee is in the planning stages of this event (tentatively to be held on June 25th from 8-11pm), but we’d love more input too.  The current concept includes celebrating the reuse of this building by YOU reusing an outfit from your closet.  Got an old bridesmaids’ dress or just can’t part with those 80s white jeans?  Bring ‘em out of the closet and to the gala.   We’ll have the event catered with DJ or band as well as some opportunities to make your mark on the building (literally!).  This Saturday the committee will be going through the building with an eye to plan the event, so please come out & add your thoughts.

If you would like to volunteer, please email Martha Harris at mharris@troycommunity.com.  We would like to get a good accounting of numbers.  If you can’t volunteer this Saturday, please stay tuned for more opportunities to be involved in our 221 E. Main St. project.

Dear Crucial Skills,

I live in a very nice, quiet, upscale suburban neighborhood. A new family recently moved into one of the homes and is doing some things that distract from the value of the neighborhood. We have covenants that restrict what is permitted, but enforcing them could be difficult and possibly costly. How can I approach my neighbors personally and express my concerns without making an enemy out of them?

Sincerely,
Not in My Backyard

Dear Backyard,

This will be the shortest answer I’ve ever written. Not because the issue isn’t crucial, but because your options are limited. I say this because I feel your pain!

With that said, here’s how I would approach this situation.

Talk to the right person. If you have a Home Owner’s Association, the association should inform your neighbor of the rules and the penalties for breaking these rules. They should then hold your neighbor accountable. If they aren’t doing this, your conversation should be with the association.

Do your research. You mentioned that your community has covenants, but you need to be sure the covenants are in force. Just because they are in the original neighborhood documents doesn’t mean they’ve been enforced over time. And if they have not been enforced, they may have no legal validity today.

Build the relationship first. If possible, you should build a relationship with your neighbor before you confront him or her about his or her distracting behavior. If your first conversation with the neighbor is about his or her transgression, it will be harder to create safety. To the degree you can help your neighbor unpack boxes, mow his or her lawn, or provide any other kind of assistance, he or she will be less likely to hear your concerns as attacks and characterize you as an enemy and more likely to actually change his or her behavior.

Be direct and polite. If there is no enforcement body and it’s up to you to speak up, then do so. But work on your story first. See them as reasonable people with different habits and perhaps no understanding of your covenants. Do whatever it takes to feel respectful and caring toward them before opening your mouth. Be friendly and polite, but don’t water down your message. If your bottom line is that this is a rule and they have to follow it, say that. For example, “Hey Pat, there’s a goofy thing in our covenants that you may not know about. Trust me, this isn’t a persnickety neighborhood and we’re glad you’re here, but I thought I should let you know before you get too settled so you’ll know how to address it . . .”

Finally, you should decide if this is important enough to you to deal with legally should they refuse to comply—or whether after your attempt at a crucial conversation you prefer to let it slide.

Good luck with your conversation. I’d tell you about mine but I worry about 140,000 of my closest friends finding out!

Joseph

Thank you to Joseph and all of the others who work on the Vital Smarts books and websites.  If you’d like to see more of their work, please go to www.vitalsmarts.com.

The main reason is to keep in touch-think about all the phases of your life and how often you might have moved around; high school, college, first jobs, internships, getting married, moving away.  Or you have family spread across the country/world and want to stay close.  All these provide opportunities to keep in touch with people you used to see regularly.    A second reason I love to write letters is the joy finding a good old fashioned letter in your mailbox brings.  For example, I sent my friend Amy a postcard and she gushed about it on her blog [click here for a link to No Car Go, her blog about car free living].  Third,  letters mark a point in time.  Recently, two friends found old letters of mine documenting my nervousness about starting grad school and holiday cookie baking.  What memories! You can’t live in the past, but it is good to remember where you were and how you have grown. Letters remind us of that.   Fourth, letters build community.  All the above reasons do too, but letters strengthen our ties to each other.  In this era of facebook and twitter accounts, 24 hour news cycles, and the ubiquitous cell phone nothing quite connects us like a letter.  This point was made recently on the BBC World Service during a piece about how important real letters are to soldiers serving away from home.   Emails and phone calls are great, but there is something about the permanence of a letter.

I recently came across the following quotation from Jane Howard.  “Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family.  Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.”  I say we need them all-a clan, a network, a family.  Each of those words mean something different, but they are ways we connect with each other.  Letter writing can bind us together in ways that other means of communication can not.

Finally, the art of letter writing slows us down and provides a calming way to put your thoughts on paper.  In a recent edition of her blog, GOOP, Gwyneth Paltrow discusses the idea of having an “Electronic Sundown” or a designated time in the evening to turn off the computer, phone, TV and relax by communing with a good book or writing a letter.  I heartily agree.    In writing a letter you can take that time for yourself and build up your relationships with friends and family.  So please, stop reading this computer screen & go find yourself a pen and some paper.  And I always welcome letters in my mailbox!

Last week TCW held our second Sip, Savor, Share event for donors and volunteers and we were so lucky to have Meera Parthasarathy from Spatial Synergy Studio present the first look at the redesigned 221 E. Main.    I’m sure you’ll have the same “oohhhs” and “awwww’s” that our audience did when they first saw these renderings.  This is only the first draft, I’m sure there will be more changes.  However, it is an opportunity for the community to really see the vision our TCW Board has had for this building. There are only a few images here, but you can click the link for a look at the entire 7 slide powerpoint presentation.

draft_redesigned221emain

Our board has always had the goal of turning this vacant building into a mixed use building incorporating a residential apartment, office spaces, and retail spaces.  During our first look at the redevelopment plan we hope to pursue LEED certification and possibly even obtain LEED-silver status.  We’ll be sure to let the community know some of the green features we hope to be putting in place, but you can already see the plans to incorporate a rain garden to minimize run off.  Check back with us often to see how the project is coming along.