The Human-Scale Design Podcast

Inspiring your friends and neighbors to activism, with Alex Ihnen

AlexIhnen_NextSTL
Photo by Alex Ihnen, used with permission

Sustainable Cities Collective

 

Alex Ihnen created the website NextSTL, as in “what’s next for St. Louis”. Alex was born and raised in Indiana. He studied journalism and public affairs at Indiana University. He and his family have lived in St. Louis for almost 10 years. I first came across Alex’s work about a year ago and was an instant fan.

 

I know where we’ve been. What’s next?

Alex gives us an overview of the website he’s developed. Part blog, part community forum, part local news. There are a lot of nice ideas and features that you may want to borrow for city-focused sites in your community.

 

Journey to hallowed new urbanist ground.

Seaside, FL turns 30 this year. For those of us who operate in new urbanism circles, the town of Seaside is a big deal. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, remember The Truman Show? Much of it was filmed in this master-planned community. Alex recently had a chance for a pilgrimage. Listen to his observations for professional designers and planners.

 

Smart development in St. Louis

The new urbanism movement has played a huge role in bringing back human-scale design in the U.S. There are a lot of developers who realize it makes good financial sense. Call it smart growth or new urbanism or walkable or livable — the bottom line is that there’s a demand for more compact development. This is especially true for Millennials and Baby Boomers. There are also developers and designers who steal the language of new urbanism, but still design crumby projects. Are there any development or redevelopment projects in St Louis that Alex is excited about right now?

 

Human-scale design is apolitical.

Apolitical, post-political, non-denominational. You know what I’m saying. No matter how you view political opinions, human-scale design really doesn’t have to be a politicized issue. We recently had a show giving political conservatives reasons to support smart growth principles. I ask Alex for some incentives for my liberal friends (or you, dear liberal listener) to shed their old passive observer self and put on a brand new community activist self.

 

“The sand in our city’s bathing suit.”

Alex is in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign with a local artist, Thomas Crone. I haven’t met Crone, but I’ve heard him described in very colorful terms. Alex gives the scoop on his crowd-funding campaign and sheds some light on “experimental journalism”.

 

Connect with our guest

Alex Ihnen has a few places he’d love for you to visit:

 

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