Greetings Planetizen readers! I'd like to welcome everyone to our new blog -- called Planetizen Interchange. This is our latest effort to provide exposure to new ideas, encourage discourse that cuts across disciplinary boundaries, and bring together allied professionals.
For this effort, we've brought together a diverse group of leaders, writers, scholars, and practitioners to regularly contribute their thoughts and opinions on the newest and most exciting ideas, trends and events that span the fields of city planning, architecture, real estate, landscape design and more.
Over the next few weeks, you can look forward reading thought-provoking contributions from the group as we ramp up towards our goal of publishing new posts on a daily basis. In addtion, we plan to continually fresh faces to our group of contributors, to provide valuable new perspectives on the many issues important to the planning, design and development community.
We hope you'll find Interchange a welcomed addition to the regular news on Planetizen. Please feel free to let us know your thoughts by posting a comment, or sending us your comments in an email at editor@planetizen.com.
Comments
new member
Hi, My name is Fred and I just found this site on google. I am interested very much in Architecture and human ecology very much since I have a severe case of MCS (multiple chemical sensitivity) and find it hard to find new buildings I can tolerate. Old building are to often contaminated with molds and/or "air-freshener" and/or insecticide residue, etc., which I cannot tolerate. Since I am very low income, and disabled by MCS, I must rent and often worry about homelessness. Where I live now is bearly tolerable but very far from ideal, both the building and the human air pollution. Having this problem (technically, it is not an allergy but seems to involve the nervous system) makes me acutely aware of how little we, as a culture, may realize how much our homes are contributing to the great rise in chronic degenerative diseases of all kinds, including cancer, since most of the incitant vapors/gases that bother (and among the worst) are man-made. Some are not even detectable by the sense of smell and include things as common as particle-board, many plastics and newsprint.
One other concern in architecture I have is that the building of New Orleans will lead to another disaster in the making. I have been very upset to find that little has been said about a very common but very ancient solution - to build all the living space up upon concrete stilts/columns above the maximum floodline - where water and moisture will not effect the living environment. It would be a permanent solution for relatively little investment, and does not rely on the dependability of outside factors, and flood control.
I wish someone can tell me why this idea is not being propagated with great hope and optimism for New Orleans.
Thank You for reading - Fred Caruso, Ashland, OR