Thinking about places, communities, and how they work
Essays on placemaking, district management, community engagement, strategy and the people who make places work. New pieces are added regularly here and on The Other Side of the Notebook, Victoria's Substack.
Desire Lines Don't Negotiate
Why people walk where they want to in public space, what planners learned from watching them, and why the fix is rarely to fight a desire line harder.
Eighty Per Cent Happy
Building community in a place that has no time for it: why it starts inside the organization, why choice beats infinite choice, and why nobody will ever be a hundred.
The Other Side of the Notebook
What a decade in newsrooms taught me about asking them for coverage: why trust travels, why negativity is structural, and why the good story is still a story.