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Holiday pop-up installation: bakery Pop-up installations are all the rage. What is more pop-up than an open air market? It is in the nature of such markets to be not there one day and there another, bringing additional people into public spaces. The open air market is an altogether excellent place-making device. Like Russian dolls that nest inside each other, markets can create streets within a street, plazas on a plaza and a village inside a city. The booths and stalls are the buildings and stores, the spaces in between the streets and the intersections become small squares. Seasonal farmers markets have spread like wildfire all across America and no surprise that this popularity coincides with the general renaissance of cities during the past decade or so. A city within a city: The Weihnachtsmarkt Stuttgart on the Marktplatz It comes as a surprise, then, that the European tradition of Christmas markets has not caught on in the US in the same way, even if there is a recent wave of Ger

Introduction : Diminished city government, underfunded and understaffed planning departments, the short attention spans of citizens and politicians, waning trust in government generally, and an accelerating speed of change – these are some of the trends that make public agencies increasingly less likely to be the source and originators for viable innovative plans. Instead communities, politicians, institutions and even public agencies themselves look beyond the familiar faces when it comes to solutions for intricate urban problems.   In the fast paced world, instant planning is highly attractive, anything that gets results fast, avoids employment but still allows stakeholder involvement and public participation is welcome.  The out-of-town expert, not burdened by local allegiances and networks, gains a kind of allure that way, even beyond the fact that the prophets are never accepted in their own hometown.  A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home (Matt

Night sky and meteors Light and darkness have been in an eternal battle from the beginning of humanity. As in good and evil, in enlightenment and the dark ages, all in all leaving darkness disadvantaged. Flying over the United States at night, one can get the strong impression that light wins against darkness, energy conservation and the dark skies movement notwithstanding. In this post we will leave those philosophical, ethical and prejudicial questions aside to shed some darkness on light as a man-made product that has become a menace to the environment as easily visible by the lumens or foot candles put out by parking lots and gas stations. The spread of light is much reinforced by the rapidly spreading proliferation of LED and laser lights that allow illumination in a previously unknown breadth of applications and not only during the holiday season. We can't avoid the allusions altogether. What with the forces of darkness who forced the Lyon festival of lights this year to be s

This week we had "Giving Tuesday", big money for renewable energy promised by Gates, Bezos and Zuckerberg in Paris, international  mayors promised  10% of their budgets towards resilience, Facebook founder Zuckerberg pledged to give away 99% of his Facebook shares to whatever good causes, and Al-Jazeera published American author Moseley’s piece " The dark alliance of global philanthropy and capitalism ".  It’s a good week to look at the impact of philanthropy. Annual Giving in the US: $358 billion and rising There is no shortage of the functions that people think the nonprofit sector should or could cover. Foundations and non-profits are variously seen as charity, job creators, as engines for economic development, counterweights to the injustices of capitalism, or as entities that step in where government fails, Can non-profits really do all that?  Nationwide 1,238,201 organizations were classified as 501(c)(3) charities, foundations or religious organizations, a re