The old saw says, “when every problem looks like a nail, all answers look like hammers.” But when the problem is how people can live in rapidly and radically changing environments, it takes more than a hammer to build solutions. What it takes is insight and thinking outside the familiar, four-walls and a chimney pot picture of what makes our homes and communities work.
Mark Lakeman is a Portland, Oregon-based community activist, architect, and lead hand at Communitecture, an architectural firm with a difference.
Communitecture says, “We design beautiful and sustainable places that bring people together in community…[w]ith an approach that explores new creative territories…”
Mark brought that creativity to Portland City Council in 2001 when dreaming up a design for the city’s now World famous “place-based community,” Dignity Village. Sixteen years on, it’s a model whose relevance and guiding principles has proven resilient and adaptable to a broader population of home seekers.
Mark Lakeman in the first half.
And; in the dying days of BC’s recent election campaign, a group of professionals concerned an issue posing enormous deleterious environmental and human health effects was not getting the media coverage it deserved rallied supporters to make of it an election issue.
Hydraulic fracturing, or Fracking, is a process so detrimental it’s been banned in a growing number of jurisdictions. But here in BC, under the innocuous rubric, “LNG” this clearly present and persistent threat carries on. In fact, expanding the Fracked Gas industry is the cornerstone of the government’s economic plan for the province.
Dr. Amy Lubik mobilized along with the BC chapter of CAPE, or the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, in the operation hoping to deliver a moratorium on Fracking in BC.
Amy Lubik in the second half.
And, CFUV Radio broadcaster and activist, Janine Bandcroft will be at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with some of the good things planned for the coming week around here, and further afield too. But first, Mark Lakeman and making big community with tiny houses.