Ben Brown

In the new normal, an affordable lifestyle is suddenly of interest to a larger circle of us. Here's what some interesting innovators are doing about it, between now and when our politics and legal structure fully align with our needs.

July 28, 2014 - PlaceShakers

Life is hard. So are baseball, soccer, and a bunch of other stuff that require making good enough guesses to size opportunities and duck calamity. With apologies from Ben Brown for beating up on David Brooks.

July 21, 2014 - PlaceShakers

Consider spending more time at the beginning of a community engagement process understanding predispositions that could turn toxic if we don’t keep the conversation about what unites neighbors.

July 1, 2014 - PlaceShakers

A local Tea Party type is making a passionate pitch for what his group considers Constitutional guarantees against government planning, and I get this deju vu tug. I’ve been here before. I’VE BEEN THIS BEFORE.

May 12, 2014 - PlaceShakers

Communities across the U.S. are increasingly frustrated at the persistence of mid-20th-century thinking about housing among local leaders even in the face of a mountain of 21st-century evidence that times have changed.

April 8, 2014 - PlaceShakers

As they settle into early adulthood, the anticipated and far-reaching impacts of the Millennial generation are formidable. Community planners, get ready. Change is a-comin.

March 11, 2014 - PlaceShakers

How can cities and towns narrow the gap between promise and performance and, in doing so, build a solid brand? Ben Brown offers a one step to-do list: Get stuff done.

February 19, 2014 - PlaceShakers

Ben Brown confronts the politics of NO and finds -- spoiler alert(!) -- "to score, you need to shoot, and to shoot, you need the puck." Welcome to the waning days of Passionate D.

December 22, 2013 - PlaceShakers

Just about everything we screw up as individuals and organizations has to do with our determination to optimize both extremes of predictability and flexibility, writes Ben Brown

November 27, 2013 - PlaceShakers

Over the next two decades, we’re going to experience the most dramatic changes in American neighborhoods since the post-WWII era. Ben Brown looks at the changes on the horizon for the housing market, and the role planners will play in meeting them.

March 6, 2013 - PlaceShakers

In rising to meet America's changing housing needs and demands, not every community is positioned to pull it off. What to do? Painful though it is, Ben Brown suggests triage.

February 10, 2013 - PlaceShakers

What do three-pack-a-day smoking habits, triple-decker cheese burgers and sprawl have in common? They all offer immediate gratification and deferred consequences. But now the bill's coming due. Ben Brown lays out some ways to face the music.

January 17, 2013 - PlaceShakers

As the Sandy clean-up gets underway, could this be an opportunity for the Eastern Seaboard to apply some of the rebuilding lessons learned along the Gulf Coast after Katrina? Ben Brown shares some pointers.

November 6, 2012 - PlaceShakers

Ben Brown argues that design adaptations intended to accommodate America's swelling senior population by "aging in place" will be unable, on their own, to meet the challenge. He looks at one model of support that goes beyond universal design.

October 9, 2012 - PlaceShakers

Can community building deliver more jobs than trying to lure back an industrial sector that's been leaving the U.S. for decades?

September 11, 2012 - PlaceShakers

Whenever a term is overused, it's up for snark attack. Ben Brown seeks to inoculate himself and others against that tendency, by describing why community health is an admirable goal and how it's connected to economic development (and beer).

July 25, 2012 - PlaceShakers

What should planners take away from last week's barrage of polls about Americans' attitudes?

June 19, 2012 - PlaceShakers

How communication based on emotion and intuition, rather than reason, may be the key to peaceful coexistence with Tea Partiers and Agenda 21ers.

May 1, 2012 - PlaceShakers

Is the dream home for the New Era compact, connected and mortgage free?

February 29, 2012 - PlaceShakers

An organic system is rarely the sum of its parts. Nothing demonstrates this as clearly as sinking your teeth into a store-bought tomato, writes Ben Brown.

December 15, 2011 - PlaceShakers