OK, that “New Urban Design” entry I did earlier today was a disaster. But rather than try to edit it, here I’ll just try to summarize what I meant to say.

I want more nature in everyday life. I’m a green in my heart, but I want my tech. I’m not of the “back to nature” variety. I’m an electric green, a viridian green. I want my tech, but I want it designed with ecology & habitat in mind. I want efficiency and intelligence, and also spirit and passion. Playful pragmatism meeting envronmental science. City planning and building design is just another form of tech, like the wheel and the abacus. Much of city planning is still stuck in the dark ages, or at best, not far out of the 19th century. Sprawl is the problem of the 20th century, but we still have even older problems to deal with. For me, traditional park planning in cities is technology on the level of the abacus. We can do better than that. The whole city should be a park, but not in a back-to-the-trees luddite kind of way. Not literally.

In that context, I find this exciting, even if it has been going on for decades. And I find this and this encouraging.