CenLamar | Est. 2006

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  • SafeGrowth (or Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design)

    Last year, I attended a two-day workshop in New Orleans about SafeGrowth, which is, essentially, a pithier term for a concept known as Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). The workshop, which was sponsored and hosted by the AARP, focused in large part on the work currently being done in Hollygrove, a particularly violent and blighted neighborhood in New Orleans. Greg Saville, a criminologist, former law enforcement officer, and urban planner based in Washington State, led the workshop. Mr. Saville has written extensively on SafeGrowth on his blog, appropriately titled SafeGrowth, and he has worked with neighborhoods and communities across…

  • Times, They Are A-Changin’

    If you are a regular reader of this blog, then you know I’ve written a lot about smart growth. It’s a topic to which I frequently return, one of my favorite subjects for a number of reasons. Understanding and implementing smart growth, I believe, are critical for any community that seeks to compete in the 21st century. As transportation and technological infrastructure has become more advanced, the American workforce has become more transient, which, ironically, means that the quality of our built environments is now more important than ever. There’s another side to this, too. The American economy has increasingly…