The first in what may be a series of interviews.
What does a town or neighborhood need to make it livable? There’s no shortage of thinking and writing about this issue, but in my experience it starts with some sort of pleasing centrally located square (place, Platz, piazza), a pedestrian only area; some landscaping, shrubbery, or topiary to go along is fine; nearby are halls or auditoriums for music and art and science; and rounding it out: commerce – restaurants and cafes of a certain quality, and stores: hardware stores, a record/cd store, cigar store + head shop, a sports store, and a bookstore. The bookstore might be one of a chain: I think Barnes and Nobles is the only significant chain left in the United States, and recently, in Amsterdam I went for the first time into a Waterstones, a Continue Reading