Content about Mayor

This is the first time I’ve heard of Harvard-educated, professional wrestler look-alike and Braddock, Pennsylvania, mayor John Fetterman, featured in this episode of Hulu’s “A Day In The Life” series. The Guardian has called him “America’s coolest mayor.”
An incredible story about someone who probably could’ve done anything he wanted with his life, but instead decided to help rebuild a fading community.
(HT Dustin Haisler)

We recently stumbled across what might be one of Cyburbia’s oldest and richest resources, “A Citizen Planner’s Toolbox”. This forum was created a while back as a gathering place for the kinds of complimentary, affordable, and alternative resources that are desperately needed by citizen planners. Since its inception, there have been quite a few ideas and links posted by peers thoughout ther planning field, that we think our readers will find valuable; especially those who often have little or no budget to work with in communicating their projects’ development plans.

Hundreds of communities have trash pick-ups or recycling initiatives, tree planting and energy conservation. But just a handful are writing comprehensive sustainability plans or reinventing themselves as meccas of green economic development. Kaid Benfield writes frequently on the NRDC Switchboard blog about some of the best of the best, and here are a few more, along with the tools that have made them successful.

Recently, New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, announced $15,000 worth of private grants to community groups to fund gardening, composting and stewardship of the city's community gardens and other green spaces. The 19 community groups who were awarded funding for their projects, applied for grants the city’s new community collaboration platform, Change by Us.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently said that there is no longer a “Ground Zero” in Lower Manhattan. The mayor is right: the World Trade Center site has been a construction hub for more than half a decade. In this same spirit, New York’s political and business leaders should stop saying that the city is “repairing” or “restoring” its skyline, language that obscures what al-Qaida terrorists took—permanently—from New York ten years ago.

In March 2011, Mayor Bloomberg, Speaker Quinn, and City Planning Commissioner Burden released Vision 2020: The New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. Produced by the Department of City Planning,Vision 2020 is a comprehensive analysis of New York’s 520 miles of diverse waterfront and a strategic framework for the waterfront, waterways, and water for the next ten years. Five experts will discuss the plan, the steps for implementation, and the challenges that lay ahead on the waterfront and the waterways.

I may be a bit behind in finding this, but I just came across the Levi’s Go Forth Braddock campaign on Chris Brogan’s Blog.  The one question that seems to be on everyone’s mind is “Is this a true investment in community planning and revitalization or simply a well planned publicity campaign?”  One claim on the Levi’s Go Forth Braddock Facebook Page (Not a Town or Levi’s site) states “There is no public input.”