Author Archives: Ken Snyder

In Jacob’s weekly round-up, he mentions Chris Steins’ Planetizen post on toys for budding planners.  As a contributor to the Planetizen blog, I responded with my favorite pick–Buckyballs! Since it is Black Friday today, I figured I would make another pitch for these small but surprisingly strong magnetic balls and how fun it is to [...]

Over the months I have been collaborating with Bill Becker from Natural Capital and Jonathan Arnold from Arnold imaging on a website, exhibit, and suite of resources to help communities imagine a more sustainable future.  The central premise is that people need inspiration, not just dooms-day projections, to be motivated to pursue a more sustainable [...]

With the deadline for presentation proposals to the Annual American Planning Association conference looming, Windows 7 provided the needed inspiration — in the middle of a strategic planning meeting where we were using Skype Video to include Jocelyn in the conversation, without warning, Windows 7 decided to shut down all programs, install updates, and restart [...]

With the newly unveiled “Places” feature, Facebook looks to catch up with pioneer services like Foursquare  and Gowalla which take advantage of location aware devices, namely smart phones and iPads, to allow people to learn about the whereabouts of their friends and more easily connect in real spaces as well as virtual spaces. With a [...]

A number of cities in the Netherlands block off large sections of downtown from vehicle traffic during market days.  While on a home exchange in the Netherlands (great way to visit a country and avoid lodging costs BTW), we visited the city Alkmaar on a Saturday.  Roughly a square mile is blocked off from traffic.  [...]