The Village Effect—An Interview With Susan Pinker

Posted on November 18, 2014 in Common Place
A more clever use of technology in cities would bring retired people together, for example, or allow municipalities to know exactly where their aging solo residents live, so that if there’s an environmental disaster such as a heat wave or a flood, teams can reach out to the isolated. The data-crunching can be done digitally, while the reaching-out can be done in person.
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The Millennials Are Coming, But Who Cares?

Posted on November 12, 2014 in Common Place
With 80 million—the largest generation ever—leaving home and descending into society, scholars, think tanks, and especially corporations are intent on understanding the inner life of a twenty something. Despite the attention that millennials are garnering, important questions surrounding community engagement are being let out.
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Was there ever a truly natural city? The Byzantines thought so.

Posted on November 20, 2014 in Common Place
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The Greeks believed humans could only achieve their full potential in the context of a city and perhaps no city built by Greeks aspired to this goal more enthusiastically than Constantinople. As a truly natural city, could this former Byzantine capital serve as a paradigm for sustainable urbanization and green growth in cities today?
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Who Needs Captains of Erudition?

Posted on November 13, 2014 in Infernal Machine
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With our backs to the wall and overcome by the sense that our university was imperiled, we faculty members made arguments that were not in the first instance financial, technological, or political. We made normative claims about what a university ought to be.
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