What We're Reading This Month

Here in the heart of summer, or winter for our readers in the Southern Hemisphere, it's a great time to pull away from daily tasks to get some new ideas about how to spark your community.

Without fanfare, these are a few articles that provoked thinking this month:

Research Shows Juvenile Curfews are Ineffective at Reducing Crime

Mayors or the FCC: Who Do You Trust to Design Broadband for Metro Areas

Why Parking Is Both Important and Trivial in Neighborhoods

Please Add Your Voice to Our Website

We want to remind you that you can either contribute your own stories and photos to make a point on our website, or you can ask us a question and receive an answer right online. Either way, your proud moments or questions result in a specific page on our website. Here are some ideas.

1. You know your neighborhood needs the good publicity, so you might tell the world about your great street party or your favorite piece of public art in the form at the bottom of the art in public places page. Maybe your commercial "Main Street" or downtown is stellar. If so, tell us about it using the form at the bottom of the commercial district revitalization page.

2. You have a question about zoning or maybe a planning term you don't understand. Ask anonymously or use your name if you prefer.

3. If we didn't mention the story you'd like to tell, or your type of question, there are many other categories of visitor contributions, or you don't even have to worry about a classification. Ask away. If your question is something that one of our editors knows about, we'll give you our take on the subject.

Please share what you know, what you and your neighbors have accomplished, or what you would like to understand. To ask a question, scroll down toward the bottom of the community development question page till you see the form. Or if you want to tell us about something, use the community development ideas page. Incidentally, the latter is a good intro to thinking about community improvement for someone who is a newbie as an activist.

Some visitor submissions now are ranking in the top traffic pages on our site. Since you might be curious, a couple of those are:

How far can a city go in forcing citizens to obey codes?

Can you take possession of an abandoned house?"

See you next month. Feel free to contact us.

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