florida – UrbanCincy

Short Film on Seaside, Florida Wins Award at New Urbanism Film Festival

More than 30 years ago Andrés Duany‘s urban design firm gave the world Seaside, Florida – the real life setting for the 1998 film entitled The Truman Show. Yes, that surreal place showcased in the movie to be too nice to be real actually exists on the Florida Panhandle.

The master planned community sparked a movement, called New Urbanism, for which Duany is as much responsible for as the movement is critiqued by contemporary architects.

Seaside focused on a lot of design concepts that were not necessarily new, but were novel at a time when developers across America were building strip malls, generic subdivisions and carefully segregating land uses. Some people even contend that Seaside helped to spark elements of the green building movement.

Love it or hate it, Seaside made an impact and changed the conversation about community design. While just 30 years old at the time his firm designed Seaside, Duany is no longer young, but he still energetically tours the country talking about New Urbanism and the tenets of good urban design and environmentalism.

The following video won ‘Best Urban Design Short Film’ at the first annual New Urbanism Film Festival in Los Angeles. Seaside, The City of Ideas profiles the coastal community and the basic ideas that influenced Duany’s firm. It is a great video to watch for anyone not intimately familiar with Duany or his New Urbanist movement, and perhaps a good video to watch for even the most familiar planners and architects out there.

Young black men in America still often viewed as invisible or a threat

Young black men in America still often viewed as invisible or a threat.

In the wake of the George Zimmerman ruling the nation has begun a serious discussion about race in America, and the standing of young black men in our communities. While racial progress has been made throughout our nation of immigrants, young black men are often viewed today as a threat in our cities or, perhaps worse yet, not seen at all. More from NextCity:

One of the main tragic factors in the George Zimmerman trial verdict, one that existed well before Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin last year, is this failure to see young black men in our cities — and when they do register, we see them as threats. It’s a cognitive failure to which Zimmerman was especially vulnerable when he chose to follow and kill Martin, but he is not alone in experiencing it.

…it was people of color in central Florida communities like Goldsboro and cities like Sanford and Osceola who turned out big last November to vote, helping President Obama win Florida and, ultimately, reelection. Afterward, Mitt Romney’s campaign aides said they lost because “voters they never even knew existed” turned out in these communities. Those invisible voters were mostly African Americans and Puerto Ricans from the depressed areas Williams referenced.