Designing Local: Revealing Our Truest Communities

By Kyle Ezell

Full Description:

We work too hard as urban planners and designers to settle for bland, mediocre places. Our work should be inspiring and creative, but established practices have us copying plans and stamping out versions of whatever’s popular at the time. Our current culture wastes too much time worshipping other communities and trying to get what they have. Why do we plan the same ideas and implement them on the ground—together—when this practice renders our places invisible in the process? It’s time for this old system to die.

Designing Local ushers in a new era when remarkable neighborhoods and cities are invented and our professions are elevated. We can now ignore fads that come and go, reject mass production, and embrace The Local. We can finally do inspired work and set our places apart from the rest. We’ll bring attention and praise to our communities, increase tourism, lure startups, and attract new residents who seek special and meaningful addresses.

The secret to creating remarkable places is in this book is in this book. Your new day and your community’s reveal is a quick but powerful read away. Help your city, town or neighborhood extract its essence and showcase itself to the world.

Praise:

“Progressive-minded planners have a whole toolkit of best practices that they use to ensure that their communities put their best faces forward, but the problem with best practices is that they become templates. Transform enough abandoned mills into cute artisanal-gastro-boutiques, repurpose enough suburban strip malls into the same mixed-use live-play-shop destinations, and you are simply replacing one form of generica with another.

Kyle Ezell has written an important and timely manifesto that challenges planners, designers, and place-makers of every stripe to stop confusing imitation with innovation. There are 90,000 municipalities in the US and every one of them has its own story to tell. As Designing Local makes abundantly clear, local integrity is more than an esthetic preference. Authentic design is a powerful driver of economic development.”

–Richard Florida, University of Toronto, NYU, The Atlantic Cities, author of The Rise of the Creative Class

“We are all sick to death of mass production and consumption and the soul-numbing cities that result. This book provides the intellectual weight to synergize ‘The Local’ movement, helping it catapult out of the sidelines and into the spotlight. Designing Local leverages the design sensibility of an inchoate but energized movement, helping to devise synergistic strategies that will make local sensibility become the modus operandi of cities throughout the U.S. and beyond.”

–Emily Talen, Professor, Arizona State University, author of City Rules

“Today’s forward-looking communities compete globally for people and investment, often by modeling each other’s strategies. Unfortunately, that’s not always a clear path to success. Kyle Ezell deftly turns the standard global approach on its ear by showing how nourishing ‘The Local’ can be the best way to stand out from the rest. Community leaders will find Designing Local both a straightforward call to action and an enjoyable read. By building on unique traits, communities can provide an intoxicating choice for newcomers and visitors while reinforcing a proud local identity.”

–William Murdock, AICP, Executive Director, Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission

"While every company tries to convince you of how much different and better it is than every other company, every city tries its hardest to convince you it's exactly like every other city that's conventionally considered cool. In Designing Local, Kyle Ezell tackles this head on, calling on cities to avoid merely chasing fads and to think hard about their own unique character while recognizing the role that best practices can play.

Aaron Renn, Publisher of The Urbanophile

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kyle Ezell
• Release date: Jul 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311219213

Kyle Ezell

Kyle Ezell, AICP, is an Associate Professor of Practice of City and Regional Planning at The Ohio State University’s Knowlton School and the recipient of numerous teaching awards including the College of Engineering’s Distinguished Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching and Ohio State University’s Excellence in Community-Based Scholarship. Ezell is also a principal of a planning, design, and public participation firm called Designing Local, Ltd. where he attempts to live up to the values and expectations set forth in this book, Designing Local.

Book preview

Designing Local

Revealing Our Truest Communities

Kyle Ezell

Designing Local

Revealing Our Truest Communities

By Kyle Ezell

Copyright Kyle Ezell © 2014

Cover design by Jon Myers (jonmyers.com)

Book design and layout by Zachary E. Kenitzer

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Smashwords Version (First Edition), June 2014

ISBN: 9781311219213

Published by Look Up Project, Ltd. at Smashwords

57 E. Prescott Street

Columbus, OH 43215

www.DesigningLocal.com

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.

My hope with this book is to unsettle the fields of city planning and design.

Designing Local is meant to be read and absorbed at once so you can take action immediately

Please pass it around and talk about it so others may also take action.

(From the back print cover)

A Revolution in Placemaking Begins Now

We work too hard as urban planners and designers to settle for bland, mediocre places. Our work should be inspiring and creative, but established practices have us copying plans and stamping out versions of whatever’s popular at the time. Our current culture wastes too much time worshipping other communities and trying to get what they have. Why do we plan the same ideas and implement them on the ground—together—when this practice renders our places invisible in the process? It’s time for this old system to die.

Designing Local ushers in a new era when remarkable neighborhoods and cities are invented and our professions are elevated. We can now ignore fads that come and go, reject mass production, and embrace The Local. We can finally do inspired work and set our places apart from the rest. We’ll bring attention and praise to our communities, increase tourism, lure startups, and attract new residents who seek special and meaningful addresses.

THE SECRET TO CREATING REMARKABLE PLACES

…is in this book. Your new day and your community’s reveal is a quick but powerful read away.

Help your city, town or neighborhood extract its essence and showcase itself to the world.

CONTENTS

PRAISE

A NEW WAY

OUR INFORMATION CRISIS

ON BEER AND BEING LOCAL

PLANNING PLAGIARISM

REMIX IDEAS

STOP PLANNING TOGETHER

MUSICAL CHAIRS

STOP WORSHIPPING OTHER CITIES

BEWARE OF WIDGETS

DESIGNING LOCAL AS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

THE STORIES WE’RE TELLING

HOW TO TELL A BETTER STORY

JUST GIMME MY GENERIC DRUGSTORE

REALITY

WHISKEY TOWN THREATENED

STREET TALK

LEARN TO SAY NO

GUIDELINES NOT TEMPLATES

THE CALL

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FIND DESIGNING LOCAL ONLINE

PRAISE

"Progressive-minded planners have a whole toolkit of best practices that they use to ensure that their communities put their best faces forward, but the problem with best practices is that they become templates. Transform enough abandoned mills into cute artisanal-gastro-boutiques, repurpose enough suburban strip malls into the same mixed-use live-play-shop destinations, and you are simply replacing one form of generica with another.

Kyle Ezell has written an important and timely manifesto that challenges planners, designers, and place-makers of every stripe to stop confusing imitation with innovation. There are 90,000 municipalities in the US and every one of them has its own story to tell. As Designing Local makes abundantly clear, local integrity is more than an esthetic preference. Authentic design is a powerful driver of economic development."

Richard Florida

University of Toronto, NYU, The Atlantic Cities

Author of The Rise of the Creative Class

"While every company tries to convince you of how much different and better it is than every other company, every city tries its hardest to convince you it’s exactly like every other city that’s conventionally considered cool. In Designing Local, Kyle Ezell tackles this head on, calling on cities to avoid merely chasing fads and to think hard about their own unique character while recognizing the role that best practices can play. It’s a needed corrective to the lemming-like behavior of all too many of our communities."

Aaron Renn

Publisher of The Urbanophile, www.urbanophile.com

"What richness has been lost by our temporary neglect of ‘The Local!’ We are all sick to death of mass production and consumption and the soul-numbing cities - if you can even call them that - that result. This book provides the intellectual weight to synergize ‘The Local’ movement, helping it catapult out of the sidelines and into the spotlight.

We now have the necessary ingredients to fully propagate Jane Jacobs’ complex urbanism: an appreciation of finely-grained urbanity, a focus on sustainability, and a public fed up with a corporate-first, top-down aesthetic that created the urban mess we have been forced to endure. Designing Local leverages the design sensibility of