2010

The American Society of Landscape Architect’s weekly blog, “The Dirt: Connecting the Built and Natural Environments,” posts detailed highlights from “Building Livable Communities: Creating a Common Agenda,” Partner’s recent Forum in collaboration with the Hirshhorn Museum.  Recapping the panel of Federal officials including HUD, DOT, and their overlapping agendas to create an “infrastructure for livability” through “interdependencies,” the blog also includes highlights from the speakers representing local government, non for profit agencies, and corporate entities. The Dirt showcases some of the newest ideas and agendas surrounding the national livability framework presented at the forum. Read about it here

What if your refrigerator gave you breakfast suggestions? Or your bed checked you for health problems while you slept? Our aging population is spurring the creation of a host of friendly household gadgets, including everything from floors that absorb the impact of falls, to mattress pads that assess vital signs and alert health care professionals to any irregularities. Outside the home, technology is in the works to create personalized radio frequency identification cards, which can tell grocery shelves to lower to your eye level or help gym machines adjust to your ability.

The Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism is exploring advances like these, along with the physical and emotional experience of aging, in their project “Brave Old World.”

Public libraries have transformed themselves from mere book-lenders into hubs of social and economic activity.  In a recent column, journalist Neal Peirce details how libraries are adding new services ranging from lending gardening tools and hosting chess club meetings, to providing job search assistance and English instruction.  Peirce quotes Partners’ president Robert McNulty regarding the transformation:

"Central libraries, notes Robert McNulty of Partners for Livable Communities, can be “the great good place in the city” — as a literacy, Internet and special film center, or as a place for lectures, for local performing arts and exhibitions. Or as a coffee house. Or as an information center for visiting tourists, or a safe place for kids."

Long considered by many as the center of high society and fine art, museums have established themselves as the elite foundation for what many museum directors proudly describe as the, “cathedrals of culture.” In vibrant metropolises, urban museums have sought to find a composite group of high class patrons amongst the density and heterogeneous nature of the city. Up until recently, museum collections sought out only the most exclusive and rarest of art as a top priority in the agenda held by longtime directors. In the current era, however; a major trend has occurred amongst many of the directors who are facilitating new programs that allow each institution to provide a focused area for creating a multicultural setting in the local community.

America’s public libraries, fast turning themselves into “one-stop shops” for digital job searches, appear to be staging one of their great historic transformations.