Social capital is the key to community development.
The opening sentence of Jane Jacobs' book The Death and Life of Great American Cities is "This is an attack on urban planning." The following video describes her as uncredentialed and self taught. My recollection is she learned a lot from her husband who was an architect.
Humans can survive without business but business cannot exist without people. Business that fails to serve the people is bad business.
Of course, buildings, streetscapes and other elements of urban planning matter, but they need to be designed with people and quality of life in mind as the first order of business and highest priority. Any other priority is insanity.
Education is an important part of fostering the development of social capital. As such, I recently spent a full two days (and then some) working on a single page listing (and mapping) Colleges in Coastal Washington which I finally published today after making the decision to post it to Pedestrian Coast rather than to the Adult Learners Handbook.
If you are in a small, remote or unincorporated community, one of the things you may wish to do is put together similar educational resources to help foster the development of social capital. People who have no college-educated family members often don't know how the system works and rural students are at a disadvantage compared to city kids for finding out about things like scholarships and how to effectively further their education.
"There is no logic that can be superimposed on the city; people make it and it is to them, not buildings, that we must fit our plans."
Humans can survive without business but business cannot exist without people. Business that fails to serve the people is bad business.
Of course, buildings, streetscapes and other elements of urban planning matter, but they need to be designed with people and quality of life in mind as the first order of business and highest priority. Any other priority is insanity.
Education is an important part of fostering the development of social capital. As such, I recently spent a full two days (and then some) working on a single page listing (and mapping) Colleges in Coastal Washington which I finally published today after making the decision to post it to Pedestrian Coast rather than to the Adult Learners Handbook.
If you are in a small, remote or unincorporated community, one of the things you may wish to do is put together similar educational resources to help foster the development of social capital. People who have no college-educated family members often don't know how the system works and rural students are at a disadvantage compared to city kids for finding out about things like scholarships and how to effectively further their education.
