Asheville is one step closer to developing a new Downtown Master Plan. Six firms have been shortlisted from among 33 mostly high-profile names that submitted qualifications in the process spearheaded by the Office of Economic Development. You can get a glimpse of their savvy by visiting them online: Chan Krieger Sieniewicz of Cambridge, Mass.; Design Workshop of Asheville; Goody Clancy of Boston; InFORM of Northville, Mich.; 180 Degrees Design Studio of Kansas City, Mo.; Sasaki of Watertown, Mass.
For more on the firms and the upcoming planning process, see our Dec. 19 print edition.
– Nelda Holder, associate editor
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I’m glad there’s one local firm on the list.
Design Workshop is anything but a local firm, they are a national chain with a branch in Asheville.
Only two of the agencies listed have specific references to community members/community involvement. Many have won AIA awards, but which have won APA awards. The people of Asheville require professionals adept at community involvement in a comprehensive planning process. We have to understand the numerous facets of the built environment, how the planned environment relates to our urban lifestyle, and how to plan for the future. Then we have to make our own (community) decisions in a collaborative process with the agency. Which agency is prepared to do this?
Do the citizens get to see the designs? Are they being present to city council to vote upon?
I have a friend who moved away that worked a local design firm. She often complained that her apartment at the Sawyer Building was like a morgue. Her neighbors were all retired and complained about the slightest disturbance, even asking her to take off her shoes that were to loud. One night out of 365 when she had friends over, the next week a letter from management. She moved away feeling that downtown Asheville was not welcoming to YOUNG PEOPLE TRYING TO MAKE IT. For whatever thats worth.
My friends and I were talking recently – we are all college educated young professionals that love Asheville and consider our home. Many of us would like to start families and make a true home for ourselves here, but few of us can find sustainable incomes that will allow us to even begin ever considering owning a home within 25 miles of downtown. We are not engaged in sustainable growth – that is strictly reckless growth but rather a frenzy of reckless development. Many of my friends & peers have already our are currently planning to relocate to Portland and other larger conscious cities. Asheville will choke itself on the old and the rich if it continues on this current path. The young, it’s future, will soon leave other opportunities – no matter how much we all may love this city.
The tenth amendment reserves powers not given to the federal government for the state or the people. So when mayors and planning boards decide issues they are excercising powers, but neither the state, being local, nor the people, being representatives, and officials.
Thus our founders gave us a law making these local officials illegal, and intended for free assembly as a traditional, constitutional for for local self-rule by the people with voice votes and consensus.
But its one thing to have a law, and another to enforce it. All those officials took an oath to uphold the constitution. The tenth amendment and free assembly is the constitution. So where is that oath? Does it mean nothing?
That no one knows the tenth amendment isn’t some right right conspiracy but a metaphysical situation that exposes our ignorance and impotency.
Vic, what in blue blazes are you rambling about? You are not only wrong, but you have the nerve to call us “ignorant” and “impotent” to top it off.
North Carolina State Constitution, Article VII.
http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/NC/STGOVT/article_vii-xiv.HTM#VII
And I quote:
LOCAL GOVERNMENT
Section 1. General Assembly to provide for local government.
The General Assembly shall provide for the organization and government and the fixing of boundaries of counties, cities and towns, and other governmental subdivisions, and, except as otherwise prohibited by this Constitution, may give such powers and duties to counties, cities and towns, and other governmental subdivisions as it may deem advisable.
To simplify it for you:
Fed grants power to the states, state grants power to local governments (counties, cities, towns, etc.)
To simplify it even further:
You’re wrong. Take your nonsensical soapboxing and rambling somewhere else.
orulz, now don’t go getting factual on him.
First of all, Federal law, like the tenth amendment, always trumps state law. The tenth amendment reads, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”
This law is legally greater than your state law allowing local officials. But really our founders made a law outlawing local rule by a few. Its that simple and I think america, asheville, and north carolina can be mature enough to deal with this, because it is a very good law. It hurts no one. The tenth amendment lets the people decide their affairs in free assembly through voice votes and consensus.
This is practiced in areas of New England that have subsequently not allowed the building that has so hurt out land in other areas of the country. Thus every approval of building at a local level, has been in violation of federal law. And federal law always trumps state law. In fact what does it signify that the writers of north carolina’s constitution are unaware of a bill of right a fifth grader could understand?
Now the reason why the tenth amendment is unknown is that there really is the kingdom of god.
You see if the people gathered in free assembly and according to the tenth amendment excercised the powers reserved to them, such as whether to allow expansion, or the school system, or even the economy; there would be a great silence, much like there is now, and this silence signifies the kingdom of god.
The kingdom of god is not the world of TV, or the world the press reports.
No it is a great reality that is evidence of something more that authority prevents us as a polity from knowing and dealing with. And this is proven by our ignorance of the tenth amendment.
Thus if the kingdom of god is known and recognized, the tenth amendment and local decision-making by consensus is more likely to fly; whereas if we expect the tenth amendment and free assembly to be enforced; that is quite hard when there are official authorities of media that don’t see or recognize the reality of the kingdom of god.
Yet the kingdom of god means that what we are as society and voices is really an enactment of authority trying to not have the kingdom of god known and dealt with: in that sense we are all sinners.
But most importantly, the widespread ignorance of a great law like the tenth amendment, and free assembly as a form for local self-rule by the people, can only be explained by the great reality of the kingdom of god. For that reality means that much of what speaks is of authority, and that authority doesn’t want the tenth amendment or kingdom of god known, until we are able to make it known. And that this authority can subsume individuals is precisely why christianity preaches forgiveness: Authority is more than the individual and more powerful.
Now I know the local elect and appointed who are so proud of themselves may have trouble with the tenth amendment that makes their significance so immoral and illegal according to the bill of rights: but at the same time I urge them to bone up on their religious literacy precisely because they are forgiven because the kingdom of god is so vast and paralyzing that christianity understands it is more and greater than one individual and that unlawful things are done until we clear them up. In that sense everything I write is intended to be helpful.
What has to be done is the elect and appointed make the move to the people and let them decide things in free assembly with voice votes of whoever present and consensus. This is not a hard thing to. It just requires a little initiative. Its practiced in new england, its been practiced in history, and it is what our founders intended. Yet it is up to the present time to enforce these good laws and practices, and this is difficult in face of the kingdom of god, and the attempts to deny the existence of the kingdom of god.
Now I have posted my name, nor said anything impolite insofar that I know, and I expect people who respond to this education negatively to post their name so they are inclined to be forward looking and constructive, as opposed to hiding, and by hiding their name, able to say things unfairly.
peace be with everyone