CenLamar | Est. 2006

  • Sharon Tohline: Southern Hair

    Sharon Tohline, CenLamar’s newest contributor, moved to Alexandria (for the first time) only two months ago. I was going to talk about something serious in this post.  I promise I was.  I’ve had a lot of interesting conversations with people lately about what it means to be new in a small city, and about what outsider status means in general.  And I wanted to respond to all of that.  But I can’t right now because I’m distracted by how much I hate my haircut. When I called one of my Baton Rouge friends last Thursday night and mentioned I was…

  • Richard Florida’s Shaping of America Map

    Richard Florida created this map, tracking changes in patents, population, and income on a city-by-city level in order to make predictions on how and where America will grow in the future. Florida, the author of The Rise of the Creative Class, is one of America’s most prominent urban theorists. By the way, you may need to download a plug-in in order to view the map. For example: As you can see, Alexandria’s not exactly a patent capital, even compared to a place like Lafayette, Louisiana: And here’s how our income tracks: Quoting from Florida’s How the Crash Will Reshape America…

  • Saving Charity

    H/t to to Oyster for pointing me in the direction of this insightful post from E at We Could Be Famous. Preservationists will love this case. The world’s seventh largest architectural firm versus the State of Louisiana, both arguing over the future of a 1939 art deco building and the fate of an entire neighborhood. If you haven’t already heard, the State and the Feds are apparently thinking about entering into this great deal in which they raze an entire neighborhood in New Orleans (one of only a handful of neighborhoods in the State listed on the National Register of…