Development on steroids: Rethinking urban planning for a city on the grow

January 7, 2008 |

It is with a walloping dose of dismay, a meager bit of optimism and sometimes amusement that I follow stories of the city’s intent to address planning and development issues, including signage, as Clarksville braces for the transition of Gateway Medical Center from Madison Street to the St. Bethlehem area, and push forward development issues that affect the entire city. But let’s start with signage.

Signage. No kidding. Someone wants to talk about signs? It’s about time, though it is only a starting point. When the city refers to “blighted” areas, it refers to areas not meeting a maximized tax potential. Your property is worth much less in tax revenue as your home, and so much more (to the city and developers) as a revenue-generating business-zoned cadre of condo’s, apartments, another mini strip mall or as part of the growing Austin Peay State University campus.

In recent months we’ve heard talk of redevelopment, urban blight, and all manner of things relating to zoning and design. The fact is, when I consider what constitutes blight in Clarksville, it’s not just Emerald Hill or Red River or Brandon Hills or any of a half-dozens areas that may or may not be blighted in the usual sense of the word but which trigger dollar signs in the eyes of developers. To see blight, all I have to do is drive down Fort Campbell Boulevard or Wilma Rudolph Boulevard and look out the car window. Blight. One big wall of urban blight in the guise of revenue-producing business districts. The heck with aesthetics.

Face the fact: the view is UGLY. «Read the rest of this article»

The Corporation: Examining the new world order

By Bill Larson | January 7, 2008 |

One hundred and fifty years ago, the corporation was a relatively insignificant entity. Today, it is a vivid, dramatic and pervasive presence in all our lives. Like the Church, the Monarchy and the Communist Party in other times and places, the corporation is today’s dominant institution. But history humbles dominant institutions. All have been crushed, belittled or absorbed into some new order. The corporation is unlikely to be the first to defy history.

In a complex, exhaustive and highly entertaining documentary, The Corporation, Mark Achbar, co-director of the influential and inventive Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, teams up with co-director Jennifer Abbott and writer Joel Bakan to examine the far-reaching repercussions of the corporation’s increasing preeminence.

Based on Bakan’s book, The Corporation: The pathological pursuit of profit and power, the film is a timely, critical inquiry that invites CEOs, whistle-blowers, brokers, gurus, spies, players, pawns and pundits on a graphic and engaging quest to reveal the corporation’s inner workings, curious history, controversial impacts and possible futures. Featuring illuminating interviews with Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Howard Zinn and many others, The Corporation charts the spectacular rise of an institution aimed at achieving specific economic goals as it also recounts victories against this apparently invincible force.

Among the 40 interview subjects are CEOs and top-level executives from a range of industries: oil, pharmaceutical, computer, tire, manufacturing, public relations, branding, advertising and undercover marketing. In addition, a Nobel-prize winning economist, the first management guru, a corporate spy, and a range of academics, critics, historians and thinkers are also interviewed. «Read the rest of this article»

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