The untold story of the vegetable peeler that changed the world, Fast Company, Mark Wilson, September 24, 2018

To this day, these tools are the best articulation of the potential of inclusive design: Developed for people with arthritis, Good Grips had thick rubbery handles that were also better tools for everyone to use.

This is a wonderful longread, and I’ll probably be touching on it in a future standalone piece. This bit on a failed product is neat, and gives you an idea of how many brilliant products might be out there that don’t work in the siloed retail and marketing segments we have:

The juvenile furniture buyers said it wasn’t furniture, it was a construction toy. So we go to the the toy buyers. They said it’s not a toy, it’s juvenile furniture. It was a great idea killed by retail, and it made him realize, he’d spent his life developing housewares products, he knew that well, and it’s what he should stick to.

But the article is really about expertly designed kitchen implements. Read the whole thing!

I’m losing the battle against the brush. I’m not alone., Washington Post, Dana Milbank, November 25, 2022

I recently bought a property in the Virginia Piedmont, with the pandemic-inspired idea of finding peace in nature. On paper, the parcel is three-quarters wooded, one-quarter pasture. In practice, the place is about 95 percent brush.

Also:

Who was I going to call? Goat Busters. For $1,000 a week, give or take, this Afton, Va., business will supply you with a herd of goats and let them loose to devour acre upon acre. “They’re on a job now,” the owner explained, eliciting mental images of goats in hard hats, punching the clock. But there was a problem: Goats like to eat greens, and my killer vines had lost their foliage for the winter.

And:

Invasive vines and plants, though here for centuries, are gradually taking over the forests, killing native flora and denying native fauna their food supply. They gain a foothold on the border between open space and forest, then work their way into the woods, overtaking indigenous plants because they have longer growing seasons — and leaving a heap of vines and dead trees.

This is fun yet slightly foreboding piece, a window into a kind of lifestyle I really know nothing about. Give it a read.

Car-dependent sprawl is not a harmless option, Medium, Darin Givens, November 27, 2022

Atlanta-area urbanist Darin Givens argues that maybe we shouldn’t allow the edges of metro areas to be paved over with sprawl-style development. It isn’t good, it isn’t a compromise, it’s bad and should be made harder/more expensive. One of his arguments is one I frequently use:

Buildable land is a precious resource in the Atlanta region. We aren’t making more of it. In fact, to preserve unbuilt ecosystems, we need to stop sprawling into the dwindling forests of the Georgia Piedmont.

In other words, preserving green space or open space means building more densely on developed land, not sprawling out forever.

Car-centric sprawl is not a neutral, harmless “option” for living. It’s a thing that hinders progress on our health/climate/environmental goals. Local governments should not be providing it in mass quantities through restrictive zoning laws.

I agree that zoning shouldn’t force these outcomes, but I think we’d get a lot less of this kind of development if we truly gave people a choice. There’s a massive undersupply of walkable places in America where you don’t need a car for every routine trip. I don’t think we are “providing” car-centric development. I think we’re mandating it. And we shouldn’t.

It’s Been 100 Years Since Cars Drove Pedestrians Off The Roads, Forbes, Carlton Reid, November 8, 2022

Framing his 9 November 1922 editorial as a solution to road safety—pedestrians were killed in shocking numbers by period motorists—he [roadbuilder Edward J. Mehren] stated that “the obvious solution lies only in a radical revision of our conception of what a city street is for.”

The ideas that “streets are for cars,” that walking in the street is vagrancy, that urbanists want to fight a “war on cars,” are all very much invented ideas that represent a break from a more urban American past.

Read the whole thing.

Related Reading:

New and Old #15

New and Old #16

Thank you for reading! Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to help support this newsletter. You’ll get a weekly subscribers-only post, plus full access to the archive: over 400 posts and growing. And you’ll help ensure more material like this!

Share