Thomas Lord

A member of the Philip Greenspun's Homepage community since November 20, 2007

If you were to log in, you'd be able to get more information on your fellow community member.

November 20, 2007, on Non-profit Ideas:
I have a suggested alternative to building Latin-American-style (in your view) towns from scratch in the U.S. It seems to me that the kinds of towns you are talking about are built organicaly, but a very large number of small developers, all making individual choices over a long period of time. In some sense, you simply *can't* reproduce that by fiat: the development is inherently cumulative, incremental, and deeply involved with the culture that dwells there. You risk creating a cargo-cult of a village if you try to plan it out as you've suggested. Rather: look to the most impoverished areas and use your charitable largesse to aim for break-even investments in the development of small businesses owned and operated by the people there. People say things like "The Web destroyed mainstreet" but I think that's only the story *so far*. Historic retailers are (mostly were) irredeemably old fashioned in how they managed their supply chains, retail space utilitization, and more -- ...