The New Urban Downtown Mesa: Ideas City?

This posting is about another artist who is A SOCIAL ACTIVIST. [Readers of this blog are encouraged to read and watch Theaster Gates on a screen that pops up in an earlier post]. 

Readers are likewise advised that your blogger enjoyed life for many years inside The Big Apple, leaving Manhattan shortly after the destruction of the World Trade Center Towers - circumstances one could hardly imagine happening, but they did. He was there during the events of 2001 - What a Space Odyssey that was! - and now I'm here.

Too often we skim over or quickly scan words or initials: take for example "ozone" or "smog" or "HPA" or "precusors" or "ultraviolet radiation" - words and initials you see in an ADEQ Press Release, again in an earlier post on this blog. 

Sometimes it takes "a political stunt" by an artist to create a visceral response to a common man-made phenomenon: that HPA from ADEQ is one of many High Pollution Alerts

An Edible Geography piece from Nicola Twilley, the mastermind behind the smog meringue endeavor, offered a more compelling explanation for the whimsical treats:
"Our hope is that the meringues will serve as a kind of 'Trojan treat,' creating a visceral experience of disgust and fear that prompts a much larger conversation about the aesthetics and politics of urban air pollution, as well as its health and environmental effects

From The Huffington Post > Smog: A Frivolous Affair?

It's a Wonder-filled life: LRT reducing emissions of carbon monoxide - ya know, like from all those cars on the freeways getting to work by commuting from long-distance sub-urbs. 

Anybody ever think about 

what a day without cars might look like?

Art Assets & Good Bones? It Takes More Than That To Build a Better Downtown

Comic from Build a Better Downtown

The image here is from a May 20, 2015 post "Cindy Ornstein's Love Letter to Mesa" on another blog about Mesa Build A Better Downtown Mesa.
Please hit the link and read the whole article

Cindy Ornstein is the Arts and Cultural Director for the City of Mesa and the Executive Director of the Mesa Arts Center. 
She oversees the Arizona Museum of Natural History, the I.D.E.A. Museum, the Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, and cultural events in the City of Mesa.
According to the post, Cindy got the job after an interview in 2010, not having seen Mesa or been to Arizona before that.

Put Some Meat On Those Bones!

Good Bones …  

It takes more than ‘good bones’

That's a phrase I've heard and used more than once.  It is admittedly casual and ill-defined.
In real estate it's usually used in the “distressed” property market that is our reality today.

The problem with the entire notion of good bones—to draw a further anatomical analogy—is that it lacks any discussion of the viscera: the bloodstream, neurology or fascia that flesh out, protect and inhabit this skeletal system. 

Cindy is quoted saying " . . . we manage facilities that are literally owned by the public. My mission is for every citizen to feel pride, ownership and engagement with these assets and resources. . . . It is really about finding the things that are going to be most effective, . . "
[See how the names of bones are turned into a visual in the image to the left]


A city with "good bones" would be one that is well thought out and works well for the people who live there.
Or, does saying that "Mesa has good bones" mean that we have an impressive infrastructure supporting our transportation network?