From Neil:

Try searching for images that combine green building with new urbanism. It’s not easy. Both movements are lead by visionary developers with strong public interest, yet creating an energy-efficient walkable community has mostly proved a bit too sophisticated to date.

Thankfully, developers like Solar Village (profiled previously and The Lander Group are breaking new ground with just that - green buildings in new urbanist environments…

Nice twist to Tuesday Talkback.

From Bill regarding Campbell’s staff:

See how it works? For an ambitious staffer, the Mayor’s Office is like a career elevator that only goes up. If your boss does well, you have a shot at getting to the Big Show in Columbus… the inside circle of a governor, or maybe, some day, a cabinet job of your own. But even if your Mayor crashes and burns, the elevator doesn’t take you back down to where you started — it leaves you off on an upper floor anyway. Assuming, of course, that you’ve been careful to make the right friends. It’s a compelling reason for young public servants at City Hall to be very, very nice to the Important People — like utility and hospital executives — that they meet on City business.

Comment?

From PedestrianFriendly.com:

Toledo, Ohio is running into a major conflict between planners�?? vision of a pedestrian-friendly village for the Westgate section of the city and Costco�??s desire to build a store in the area.

�??Mayor-elect Carty Finkbeiner �?� urged Costco Corp. and the plaza�??s owner to look nearby for an alternative site for the big-box store,�?� the Toledo Blade reports. �??The store and accompanying smaller buildings run contrary to the �??shopping village�?? concept advanced two years ago by �??Walk Westgate,�?� a consultant�??s report that suggested reconfiguring streets and allowing denser development to support small businesses and a pedestrian-friendly atmosphere…�?�

Posted by Caterina Fake:

“I think that is an important story, because it is typical of what probably happens every day somewhere in the corporate world.”

This doesn’t look good for the Brown Campaign. If you’re going to threaten bloggers, you shouldn’t leave tracks:

[B]eing a US Senator is about leadership and part of that is how you allow your staff to conduct themselves, if this sorry episode is any guide, then leadership is something sorely lacking in Sherrod Brown - did he authorize his staff to engage in this activity?

Meet the Bloggers just got a whole lot more interesting…

After recapping all that’s transpired with the Sherrod Brown campaign, Tim Russo writes :

I would love to move on to the damage that Mike DeWine has done to Ohio, but it is simply impossible when Sherrod Brown personally attacks this blogger and others, to their face, in public, then has his campaign staff lie about the incident via fictitious blog identities, then has the same fake identities threaten legal action against multiple blogs for reporting the facts, then has the head of the largest AFL-CIO chapter in the state of Ohio carry his water for him on this blog as the sum total of his public response to the matter…

I think the last paragraph (not part of this excerpt) is in response to this post by Jim Eastman.

Jim Eastman with a link to What kind of coffee are you?

I was espresso too.

“ The Chicago Daily News is paying citizen journalists $100 for stories or photos that are the most viewed on the site in the month posted…”

From an email, reprinted with permission:

I read awhile back on your blog and Jeremy Smith’s from Case about interest in starting a Cleveland Wiki. I thought it was a great idea and pondered it for awhile, and then today bought the domain clevewiki.com. I looked around at various wiki programs, and ended up installing the same one Wikipedia uses, which is MediaWiki. A lot more people are probably familiar with it, so that will help. But what I hope to accomplish now is getting some other enthusiastic people to help get together some intial content. I need some project managers and others interested in working on this. I think this could really take off, and would like it to be a collaborative effort…the more involved, the better. I tried to post a reply on your blog, but it didn’t work. So I was wondering if you could throw out the idea for me there. I am hoping that people are still enthusiatic about this sort of thing, and would be interesting in creating it.

“Friends, trust me, this is a big deal . A major barrier to digital inclusion for low-income people in Cleveland and elsewhere has just come down.”

The second NEO bloggers carnival begins on Monday, 1/2/06 and the theme this time is “Resolutions.”

How does the carnival work?

First, you pick one of your blog’s entries that you’ve already posted that pertains to the theme.

Then, you send the post’s link to jillzimonATsbcglobalDOTnet.

Finally, it will get posted one day during the week of the carnival, accompanied by a (hopefully) well-written introduction that is intended to tease everyone to go read the full entry as posted on your blog.

Think of the carnival as a kind of “magazine of blogs” that highlights a certain theme as written about by NEO bloggers. With more than 250 of us, there’s plenty to cover.

Haven’t written something related to, dissing or discussing resolutions, but think you might between now and the day after New Years Day? You can send me the link up through Monday evening, 1/2/06. You can submit as many links as you like.

Got questions or comments? Post them here or email me.

Submissions for a logo and a new name also are still being accepted.

Picking up the post midstream:

Conservatives love to talk about the ‘invisible hand’ of the economy, and they have a high regard for leaving this ‘force’ uninhibited, (I wish they had a similar regard for the ‘invisible hand’ of nature!) Our job in community development is to interfere - to build and rehab houses and businesses in neighborhoods that the economy, the ‘invisible hand’ has left behind. If we are good, we will reveal value where others had failed to see it, and create new markets - if we are bad, we will waste money on a project for which there is no demand. It takes a combination of head and heart to see the vision and the reality. I think this combination of head and heart is what is needed to be a good steward - neither unfettered greed nor starry-eyed idealism. It is tough to get at the right combination, but I believe it is possible when we are honest and open and refrain from demonizing the opposition. The right loves to criticize the left for being soft and unrealistic. While I embrace the word Liberal, I agree with the critics. To take a phrase from the right, I would suggest that ‘compassionate conservatism’ is just what we need - taking these words literally and not for the deceptive buzzwords they have become. We must be conservative with our resources, whether they are historic buildings, people, or wealth - while at the same time being compassionate for those who have as well as for those who do not…

This bothers me more than the government listening to phone conversations.

Was there ever any doubt?

On Letting People Know You Love Them:

It’s easy to take our feelings for granted and to assume that the people we care about know how we feel about them. But while those we love are often quite cognizant of our feelings, saying “I love you” is a gift we should give to our loved ones whenever we can. Letting people know you love them is an important part of nurturing any kind of loving relationship. Few people tire of being told they are loved, and saying “I love you” can make a world of difference in someone’s life, take a relationship to a new level, or reaffirm and strengthen a steady bond. Everyone needs to hear the words “I love you.” Three simple words - I - Love - You. When you declare your love for someone you admit to them that you care for them in the most significant way…

Good stuff from Loretta, newly added to the NEO blogroll, thanks to this link from Modesto Speed to a kinja search for Cleveland blogs:

How does Zen or quality apply to the maintenance of a web log? The process of displaying your life or opinion for anyone to criticize, accept or judge must be approached with a particular attitude of invulnerability. This does not mean that serious bloggers are invincible, but rather that fear of exposure is not a component in the equation of creativity. Bloggers challenge convention and stereotypes. They break the �??rules�?� and experiment with genres to provide fresh material or a new angle on an old question. Their curiosity and skepticism impels them to dispute common knowledge and refute accepted ideas with new facts. The interrelationship between writer, topic, reader and the range of subjective experiences combine to create a sense of presence, immediacy, and perhaps moments of enlightenment.

I wonder if Jeff Stacklin is on the same distribution list as I am. I received an email with a link to the same post he writes about in Editor’s Choice:

Lev Gonick, vice president of Information Technology Services at Case Western Reserve University, has his list of the Top 10 technology stories for 2005.

Anyone who has met and talked with Mr. Gonick knows he�??s fluent in academic techno-speak, though in this blog entry, he speaks almost like a normal person.

I agree with most of his entries, though maybe I would have prioritized them slightly differently…

From the forum Julie Kent set up to help organize the wiki, a project overview:

The goal of this project is to create a definitive guide to Cleveland with information ranging from places to go and things to do, to the city’s culture, politics, history, and more.  The great thing about it is that anyone can add and edit content, so once we get the intial content up, it will continue to grow itself with the help of other Clevelanders who visit the site.Other cities that have so far created successful wikis are NYC and Seattle, which I hope we can emulate somewhat with our project…

Also need are category managers. Props to Will Kessel of CollisionBend for taking History. Which category will you contribute to?

Reposted with permission, an email from the editor of the Homeless Grapevine:

Regarding, those living in poverty and communication through the internet. It is my experience that those who are living on the edge have very little time to learn about the internet. It is interesting, however, that those who have lost everything spend time teaching themselves about the internet. Go into the libraries especially the main branch and see how many homeless people there are using the computers. They start out with playing games, then they start investigating the web, and eventually start communicating through the internet. I just received a story from one of my previous writers who relocated to New Orleans a month ago. He figured he was barely making it here so he might as well go down there where he has advantage because he has previous homeless experience.

We will publish it in the next Grapevine, but it is an amazing first hand account. We have a woman who came into the office everyday for two months and gave us information about the state of the Women’s Shelter. She provided us information on a daily basis, and we allowed her to use our DSL connection every day to talk to family and friends. She got housing, but I am sure that she will continue to use the internet to communicate.

The libraries are our biggest drop in centers or warming centers in the community for homeless people. It is unfortunate that our shelters and drop in centers do not have better access to the internet. Most shelters only recently were connected (like in the last two years) and they certainly do not see the value of extending those connections to their clients.

I very much want to set up a community center near or in the drop in centers with access to computers and the internet. Now that we have that the affordable housing website (www.housingcleveland.org) it is critical to get homeless people to use the web. It can significantly reduce the time spent homeless.

JMZ wants to know, “Who do you think makes the Top 10 Interesting People in the NEO Blogosphere?”

Andy Birol Arena looks like a bulletin board to me. Plus he uses the p-word. Hasn’t anyone told Andy about blogs yet?

Sydney Smith takes the ABJ to task:

Our local newspaper looks at the number of medical licenses in Ohio over the past five years and interviews a trial lawyer and reaches the conclusion that there never was a malpractice insurance crisis… The malpractice crisis was real, it wasn’t a scare tactic. And if rates had continued to increase at 30% a year, more doctors would have quit or moved. It’s more than a little disingenous to look back at the tort reform campaign and say it was based on a lie just because it worked. But then, lawyers are good at being disingenous.

Where is this in Cleveland?

What to do with a desolate, unsafe, blighted industrial district of empty warehouses…

Business leaders in Tacoma knew exactly what to do - transform it into a university village…

Beginning with this post , Stu Spivack’s got 6 posts on his thoughts about the CleveWiki project. From reading his blog, I think we should all pay attention to his thoughts…

From Kossuth :

Childish boosters of our city, whose notion of promoting life here involves little more than touting the “low cost of living” and urging frightened suburbanites to dine downtown, probably aren’t much concerned with how our local culture–with all its quirks, imperfections, backwardness, and originality–has been gradually disappearing since, say, the groundbreaking of Gateway in 1994. But forgive Madeline Bruml, the Hawken High School student and child of the well-to-do who founded Brain Gain Cleveland. She’s young, and knows not what she does, and her program at least contains the very good idea of giving local high school students and opportunity to shadow people doing business downtown. Cleveland Uber Alles suspects that Bruml’s project will look wonderful on her application to, say, Harvard, or some other elite, out of town school. Now if only she had thoughtful adults around her who might help her pro-Cleveland marketing message reflect more than emptyness about our region’s economic future, like this from Adam Paulisick a Manager in Channel Sales at Amco…

You have to visit CUA for the rest and all the links.

Posted by Liz Lawley:

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has just released a new report entitled How Women and Men Use the Internet. The short description: “Women are catching up to men in most measures of online life. Men like the internet for the experiences it offers, while women like it for the human connections it promotes.”

No MP3s, no DVD players, no car stereos .

Lovely.

Seth Godin asks:

Is marketing the art of tricking people into buying stuff they don�??t need?

Or is it about spreading ideas that people fall in love with?

ED leadership advice from Don Iannone:

This is the year of “doing what is most important” for your area’s economic competitiveness. As the saying goes, don’t sweat the small stuff! This is also the year for strengthening your leadership for economic development. Your organization and community will need stronger leadership in 2006 to reach their top economic objectives…

Happy Birthday, Lori.

As Daniella put it, “It was wonderful to feel the good vibration in the room.”

Stop by and wish her well.

Brian on WCPN’s move:

Kit Jensen–you have big time homework for the new year: Fix the technical flaws at the new studio, hire a lot of new talent, and tell the PD columnists if they want to be on the radio call in like the rest of us. (If you feel bad for Feagler, put him in that glass studio on Euclid and tell him that he is podcasting all day, and see how long it takes for him to realize his mic. is not on.

Steve Goldberg drops a p-bomb:

[M]aybe a central website with links to the local self publishing poets and small publishing houses might make sense. It could also help highlight the creative and unique style that Cleveland has developed. And I mean to the rest of the world. It may be the beginning of the Cleveland Poetic Renaissance.

The other way fans celebrated his 21st birthday:

Loyal readers of this ‘blog certainly remember our LeBron Day pilgrimage and celebration of last year. For those new readers who may not recall, Corey and I have pledged to take a spiritual journey to Akron, Ohio and beyond every December 30. This year, we added stops, cemented traditions, and even managed to witness yet another LeBron Day Miracle…