The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

by Yule Heibel on June 13, 2010

  • Density / livability doesn’t have a singular form. Think choices instead:
    QUOTE
    Livability is about choices, and if you want to pay four to five dollars a gallon to drive ten miles, you should have that right. But you should also have the right to avoid paying four dollars for a gallon of gas when you go buy half a gallon of milk. More to the point, if your monthly fuel costs cause you to not be able to pay your mortgage, as so many hard working Americans discovered in 2008, it becomes a problem to have no other options.

    (…)

    The anti-livability gurus decry the administration’s approach as top-down. But has any community — rural, suburban or urban — ever seen a more top-down approach than the way state DOTs built the interstate highway system and continued to add more and more freeways? I should know; I served at the New Jersey Department of Transportation from 1973 to 2007. I watched community after community, property owner after property owner, feel powerless and helpless over how we conducted our business.
    UNQUOTE

    tags: liveability, livability, project_for_public_spaces, gary_toth, density, urbanism

  • Wise and entertaining lecture about how Aristotle still has lots to teach us.
    QUOTE
    Democracy thrives on civil debate, Michael Sandel says — but we’re shamefully out of practice. He leads a fun refresher, with TEDsters sparring over a recent Supreme Court case (PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin) whose outcome reveals the critical ingredient in justice.
    UNQUOTE

    tags: michael_sandel, democracy, justice, resources, aristotle, harvard, video, ted_conference

  • File under “resources”: a collection of links for learning about journalism.
    QUOTE
    Ambitious journalists don’t have to worry about affording extra education when free open courses are available for anyone to take online. Spend some time studying and exploring the various aspects of journalism with these classes before forging your own future as a journalist. These courses will help you learn about writing, reporting, photojournalism, multimedia, and more.
    UNQUOTE

    tags: journalism, resources, education

  • Worth installing Google Earth for. Via @stewart (Note: If you don’t have Google Earth yet, just zoom out a bit and then select “satellite” view. The following illustration is just a much-zoomed-out satellite view to give an indication of the ocean floor topography here: 

    tags: google_earth, oilspill, deepwater_horizon

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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