Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Part I: More Housing Choices Are Coming to Ferndale
Housing for All Ferndalians & Income Levels This is a two part blog post on the development growth spurt and new housing in Ferndale. In Part One: I explore why new housing projects help the city address housing needs for everyone. In Part Two: I discuss city initiatives to create inclusive housing policies, and responding […]
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Top Five Ferndale of Things 2016
I concluded my seventh year on Ferndale city council and my third year (non-consecutive) serving as Mayor Pro Tem in 2016. City council and city staff made significant progress in 2016 with so many great projects and experiences to choose from. Alas, this is a list of five, hence only five choices. Here are my top […]
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Beep. Beep. Yeah. Get into Zipcar
On Monday, April 11, 2016, Ferndale celebrated its new partnership with Zipcar. I was honored to speak on behalf of my council colleagues to welcome our new partner to Ferndale. Below are my ribbon cutting ceremony comments: It’s a pleasure today, on behalf of the Ferndale City Council and Mayor Coulter, and the Ferndale community to […]
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Smart City. Smart Policy. Paid Parental Leave
I’ve watched my friends, women and men, prepare for a new baby with joy and excitement, and also concerned about how much time they would have to bond and physically heal before heading back to work. Like many women in the workforce, my friends scraped together their paid time off with the Family Medical Leave […]
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Fair Dinkum: Park Ingenuity
Fair Dinkum: Aussie slang that means true, real, genuine. In 1998, I lived in Tasmania, Australia as an exchange student. I was 14. During my year abroad, I went on a two-week trip with 30 other exchange students through the center of Australia to Uluru (the big monolith). We drove and camped during our tour […]
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Age Friendly Ferndale
How livable is Ferndale? A couple Sundays ago, I asked myself that question while reading an article in the American Planning Association journal about the AARP Livability Index. Sipping my coffee with my journal in one hand and my laptop next to me on the couch, I was very curious about the Index measures and […]
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Citizen involvement shaping growth and development
Communities have been in transition from the typical car-focused development known as urban sprawl to smart growth or compact, higher-density development that is now known as the preferred way to grow an urban downtown. New development projects that include retail space, new housing and office space needs to be easy to walk to, close to transit, increase […]
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Twenty Years: Revitalizing Downtown Ferndale
In the December 2014 Ferndale Friends issue, I responded to questions about the 3-60 development project. My intent was to expand on that response here, but that intent evolved into answering my personal question “when DID Ferndale determine to build higher-density, mixed use office and residential in the downtown?” Essentially, I “scoped creeped” my original post idea, […]
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Borders of Opportunity
It’s time to finally shed the negative narrative of inner-ring municipal borders as dividers between Detroit and its border communities. The common narrative frame about suburbs and Detroit municipal borders typically focus on borders as physical and emotional dividers. Instead let’s reframe the municipal borders as positive opportunities that benefit everyone. Detroit and the inner-ring […]
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Jet lag…
Santa gets jet lag pretty bad, traveling like he does. Some coffee and sweets would be nice.
Got any book recommendations?