CenLamar | Est. 2006

  • Alexandria and the Cul-De-Sac Syndrome

    This afternoon, I read the recently published book, The Cul-De-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream by John K. Wasik. Throughout the past few months, I have been contemplating a post on how the current economic recession was fueled, in part, by the machinery of sprawl development and the unsustainability of what former President George W. Bush referred to as “the ownership society.” For decades, America has subsidized expansion and sprawl, neglecting and disinvesting in our urban areas and inner-cities and, instead, investing billions and billions of dollars in order to expand road, drainage, sewage, and utility infrastructure to…

  • Dinosaur Speak

    Low Hanging Fruit from The Town Talk: Newspapers are changing. In the past five years most have shorter stories, fewer and skinnier pages, and less of just about everything. The Town Talk, like other community newspapers, however, still does the one thing that the New York Times, CNN and the bloggers don’t do — it chronicles the area’s history, day-by-day and year-by-year. Riiiiight.

  • Beating a (poorly paid) Dead Horse

    We spend huge amounts of money here in CenLa every year in attempts to spawn economic development.  We have certainly have had some luck with a few new businesses opening and hopefully more coming to town than leaving.  Unfortunately, however, we’ve seen the ugly face of traditional economic development efforts.