I am the Director of the Metropolitan Design Center in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, and a professor in the School of Architecture.
Minneapolis/St.Paul, MN
Joined March 2011
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Check out my piece in Huffington Post on the the recently deceased and greatly talented designer, Michael Graves. huffingtonpost.com/thomas-fi…
The "Carbon-Combustion Complex," as Oreskes and Conway call it, drives our economy, creating a paradox: we use more oil the cheaper it gets.
If you need a reason why we need to take climate change seriously, read Oreskes and Conway's new book The Collapse of Western Civilization.
Have been away from Twitter for over a year. Completed two book manuscripts now off to two different publishers; both should be out in 2016.
Stephen Mouzon's new book, New Media for Designers + Builders is the best book I've seen on new media for new media novices. Worth reading!
Low taxes and suburban sprawl don't mix. The latter needs a lot infrastructure, making higher taxes inevitable. Low taxes demand density!
Mayo's Transform conference showed how design has reduced the cost and improved the quality of healthcare by keeping us out of hospitals.
Luis Bettencourt in a June issue of Science shows how cities offer a way of reducing our ecological footprint. Can we urbanize fast enough?
A lot of angry clouds today. Shouldn't we all be angry that, because of our own behavior as a species, we have caused so much angry weather?
A great piece in Harpers about the future of reading, by Mark Kingwell, one of Canada's most insightful thinkers: harpers.org/archive/2013/08/…
Is Detroit's fiscal bankruptcy a result of its social desolation, with communities emptied out? Are financial and social capital connected?
Bankrupt Detroit might do what a nearly broke Bridgeport, CT, once proposed: abolishing the city and ceding its parts to wealthier suburbs.
Saw two films: one about Siberian hunters, the other about Park Ave. billionaires. The moral: You can be rich and happy, but it's unlikely.
An old cars drove around my neighborhood today, I thought: we all now live in a kind of space-time, with many eras occupying the same road.
Rode my bike today as cars zoomed by and wondered who had more power. Say they get 40 mpg; my bike gets the caloric equivalent of 4000 mpg.
Having completed a book and a vacation, I am back tweeting, wondering how this medium can be a force not just for information, but insight.
Public boarding schools can close the achievement gap in education and shift funding from prisons to schools: - z.umn.edu/dpe.
Check out my latest piece in the Huffington Post, z.umn.edu/dgs, on the negative impact of political party branding.
See my latest Huffington Post piece: z.umn.edu/c90, about how to make higher ed healthier.