DEFTSPACE LAB

Research, design, and education on people and environments focused on sustainability, clean energy, nature-health, and social justice

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Design by Deficit:

Neglect and the Accidental City

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Design by Deficit tackles the array of urgent issues besetting the American city, from crime to infrastructure failure to entrenched inequality, with warmth and wit, taking those new to urban issues by the hand and showing them around the accidental cities crafted by unintended consequences. A surprisingly positive volume, presenting the promise of nature in the city and more resilient sustainable living with scholarly rigor and irresistable flair.

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TALKS

We’re skilled at multi-media presentations, including video segments, engaging graphics, and spontaneous audience interaction. Extemporaneous, Q&A based talks are a specialty.

WORKSHOPS

We specialize in working with diverse audiences, from community members to professionals to first-generation college students in a variety of fields. Special expertise in hands-on, experiential learning and in interactive sessions.

CLASSES

We teach students in a variety of academic disciplines, including design and planning, natural resources, natural sciences, geography, environmental health, and sustainability.

COURSE PACKAGES

We’re skilled at multi-media presentations, including video segments, engaging graphics, and spontaneous audience interaction. Extemporaneous, Q&A based talks are a specialty.

CONSULTING

We’re available in the following areas on a consulting basis. Past clients have included engineering and architecture firms, academic departments, municipalities, not-for-profit organizations, homeowners, and private businesses.

A Season of Abundance and Doom

by Deftspace | August 14, 2026 | City Wild, Climate Change, Design, Resilience, Sustainable Home, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

🍅August brings with it summer abundance, and the old holidays of Lughnasa and Lammas celebrating the first fruits of the harvest season. In my house, that's tomatoes, chiles, eggplant, basil, cukes, and a few zucchini, plus some new everbearing strawberries doing...

How to (Re)Build Your City for $10/Gal Gas

by Deftspace | April 16, 2026 | City Wild, Climate Change, Design, Energy, Health, How to (Re)Build Your City, Infrastructure, Planning, Resilience, Sustainable Home, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

Or $8/gal or $15/gal or whatever’s three times what you’re used to paying. What can we do in places built around driving everywhere with fuel that’s suddenly unaffordable? Plenty:Insulate buildings - roofs, walls, windows, doors, floors. Behold the power of...

A Tiny Daily Vacation

by Deftspace | February 18, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, Behavior, Climate Change, Design, Design X Deficit, Health, ReForest, Resilience, Sustainable Home, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Everybody’s worried What’s on your mind today? Everybody’s got a worry or six - what’s your top one today? Or maybe your top seven? Who couldn’t use a refuge, a place to find a respite from the incessant mayhem of the world? We’ve all got that in common, that we’re...

Cryptid Guilt

by Deftspace | February 17, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, Behavior, City Wild, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

This page may include affiliate links. Buying through them adds *no* additional cost to your purchase, supports "30% Wild," and supports independent bookstores via Bookshop.org. What a deal! Thanks so much for your support!Guilt How about this: we’re afraid of nature,...

Is Every Impossible Animal a Hoax?

by Deftspace | February 13, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, Behavior, City Wild, Invasives, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Hoaxes You knew this was coming: The Hoax. There’s people who genuinely think they saw an Impossible Scary Animal and are simply mistaken, which could happen to anyone. Anyone can make a mistake. But what about people who *deliberately* mislead others? Not just...

Awe and Impossible Animals

by Deftspace | February 13, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, Behavior, City Wild, Health, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Awe Maybe we see Impossible Scary Animals because we need nature to be bigger, badder, and wilder than it is, at least the nature around us. Maybe we crave awe. The year 2024 gifted the US with both a total solar eclipse and multiple dazzling displays of the aurora...

Your Impossible Brain

by Deftspace | February 12, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, Behavior, City Wild, Climate Change, Health, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

How many sightings of Impossible Scary Animals are exactly this: seeing an animal or a human-like shape in a totally unrelated object? We Want to Believe Do we simply want to believe? That there’s more out there, that the wilderness is still untamed and closer than we...

Possible Perception or Impossible Reality?

by Deftspace | February 12, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, Behavior, City Wild, Climate Change, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Have you ever something unsettling happen in the woods that you couldn’t explain? Well - have you? If I ask you this question, how would you answer, and what question are you answering?Most of my guests have understood it as being about the test of real situations in...

The Coyote of Resilience

by Deftspace | February 12, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, Invasives, ReForest, Resilience, Ruins, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Never bet against coyotes Never bet against Coyote, the trickster and sometimes god in the stories of various Native nations of North America. He’s both an irritating trickster and admired for his creative anarchic energy. Sometimes the hero. Sometimes chaos, the...

Our Frenemy the Bear

by Deftspace | February 10, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Nature is our frenemy We love nature, when it’s butterflies and sunsets, when it’s soothing waves or rain, when we’re hugging a tree. But we hate or fear nature, too, when it’s wildfires, hurricanes, or simply a swarm of mosquitoes. This isn’t new. You can look back...

The Rise of the Machines – or Feral Pigs?

by Deftspace | February 10, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, Invasives, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

When is a pig not a pig? When it’s the worst invasive species anywhere. Whether wild boar, razorback, or wild pig, feral swine top the list of ecological worries across most of the US, and much of the world. What makes feral pigs so scary and so very hard to control,...

No Bison, No North America

by Deftspace | February 10, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, Climate Change, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Bison *are* North America Bison have been here so long and have been living with humans for so long that they actually co-evolved with us, with the humans who have lived in North America for millennia. Bison changed physiology over that ocean of time to better...

What Is and Isn’t a Fisher (Cat)

by Deftspace | February 6, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

What's a fisher, what's not a fisher, and why do they freak people out? Fishers are mythical Not because they don’t exist. They very much do. They aren’t a myth, but myth-like. Mythical. Or, if you like, “mythic.” Virtually everyone treats fishers as though they...

For Love of the Dark Scary Woods

by Deftspace | February 6, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, Behavior, City Wild, Design, Graffiti, Invasives, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

What makes a place creepy? Spooky season is getting underway as I write this. Halloween decorations are going up and haunted houses are opening up, as a great wave of pumpkin spice rolls across the land. The long anthropocene summer is hanging on, but the mists of...

Rewilding, but with Zombies

by Deftspace | February 6, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, Design X Deficit, Health, Invasives, ReForest, Resilience, Ruins, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

What if campfire stories were about rewilding? Stay with me here:The ghost of your yard is a forest. Or a prairie, or even a wetland. Maybe it’s your neighborhood or your whole town, but in any case, what’s haunting your house is this past: what grew on the ground...

Mountain Lions Everywhere

by Deftspace | February 6, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

For a lot of us, mountain lions are the scariest animal potentially in our backyards. A panther underwater Apparently that’s held true through the centuries, since long before the immigrant ancestors of Americans like me arrived. The Ojibwe/Anishinaabe people, who’ve...

A Wolf at Your Door?

by Deftspace | February 5, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Track the Big Bad Wolf from fairy tales and metaphors to the real animal, and learn that everything you think you know about this elusive predator is probably wrong. The Big Bad Fill-in-the-Blank If it’s a fairy tale or a cartoon, we all know the Big Bad Wolf. He’s a...

Return of the Thunderbirds

by Deftspace | February 5, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, Climate Change, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

What’s America without thunderbirds? Or any wild place without some big scary, semi-supernatural Monster Birds? What do we lose when we lose big raptors - or more happily, what have we regained from their return? Bald Eagles If you’re young, this may surprise...

Terrors of the (Inland) Seas!

by Deftspace | February 4, 2026 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, Design X Deficit, Health, Infrastructure, Invasives, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Ask yourself: are you afraid of sharks? Who isn’t?Everybody knows sharks are savage bloodthirsty killers, the scariest animal in the ocean by far, the stuff of nightmares. Right? But how about this: *where* are you afraid of sharks?You can rate your shark fear/phobia...

How to (Re)Build Your World for Wildlife

by Deftspace | December 23, 2025 | 30% Wild podcast, Behavior, City Wild, Climate Change, Design, Design X Deficit, Health, How to (Re)Build Your City, ReForest, Resilience, Sustainable Home, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Radical idea: our places can be places for wildlife, too. But radical ideas are just talk without specific actions. Actions like: Cover the basics: shelter, water, food, spots to raise young. For prey *and* predators. Native plants everywhere. Or at least 70%...

Impossible Scary Animals: Seeing What’s Not There

by Deftspace | December 16, 2025 | 30% Wild podcast, Behavior, City Wild, Climate Change, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Find us where you listen to podcasts at thirtywildpod.com“30% Wild” podcast episode summary What is it we see, when what we see is “impossible”? Have you ever had something unsettling happen in the woods that you couldn’t explain? Whether animals way out of place,...

Never Bet Against Coyotes

by Deftspace | December 2, 2025 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, Health, Invasives, ReForest, Resilience, Ruins, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

"30% Wild" podcast episode summaryWily hero, despised villain, or something in between? Love coyotes or hate them, don’t bet against them being in your backyard, under your porch, or even trotting down your city’s streets. What makes these wild canines icons of...

Bear-anoia

by Deftspace | November 18, 2025 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, Health, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Find us where you listen to podcasts at thirtywildpod.com“30% Wild” podcast episode summary Is that dark shape outside your window a bear or just your imagination? As black bears move into new places and get closer to humans, the answer may surprise you. Are backyard...

Apocalypse Pork: Feral Pigs

by Deftspace | November 11, 2025 | 30% Wild podcast, Invasives, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

"30% Wild" podcast episode summaryConquistadors, pulled pork, and an invasive species "bomb," as we follow feral hogs through the centuries and across the country. Where are wild boars now, is eating them the answer, and what is and isn't dangerous about wild swine?We...

Eat Burgers, Save the World: Bison

by Deftspace | October 28, 2025 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, Climate Change, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Find us where you listen to podcasts at thirtywildpod.com“30% Wild” podcast episode summary Fluffy cow or climate hero? Which is scarier - how much our past and future depends on the bison’s unbelievable impact, or how close we came to losing that impact forever? Or...

Legend of the Fisher (Cat)

by Deftspace | October 21, 2025 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Find us where you listen to podcasts at thirtywildpod.com“30% Wild” podcast episode summary If any animal in the eastern US has a myth, it's the fisher, also sometimes called the fisher cat. What's true about this giant weasel and what's just a story around the...

Fear in the Woods

by Deftspace | October 14, 2025 | 30% Wild podcast, Behavior, City Wild, Design, Graffiti, Invasives, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Find us where you listen to podcasts at thirtywildpod.com“30% Wild” podcast episode summary What makes a place creepy, and most especially, what makes the woods spooky? Is it just the animals that are scary, or is there something else waiting off the trail? From...

Back from the Dead, aka Rewilding

by Deftspace | October 7, 2025 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, Invasives, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Find us where you listen to podcasts at thirtywildpod.com“30% Wild” podcast episode summary What past life is in your yard, waiting to be resurrected? What do zombies have to do with ecology? In the spookiest way possible, we dig into rewilding your yard,...

Protected: Closing the ‘Book

by Deftspace | January 22, 2025 | City Wild | 0 Comments

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Mountain Lions in the East

by Deftspace | October 17, 2024 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, ReForest, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Find us where you listen to podcasts at thirtywildpod.com “30% Wild” podcast episode summary Mountain lions, cougars, panthers, pumas - by any name, they’re the scariest animal out there, at least in our imaginations. On “30% Wild,” we look at the prospect of these...

Snakeheads and Sharks

by Deftspace | October 3, 2024 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, Climate Change, Invasives, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Find us where you listen to podcasts at thirtywildpod.com “30% Wild” podcast episode summary Face your fear of sharks and dare to go back in the water - as long as you’re watching for the scary invasive species lurking in your neighborhood lakes and rivers. We discuss...

Ravens and Raptors

by Deftspace | September 26, 2024 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, Climate Change, Invasives, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Find us where you listen to podcasts at thirtywildpod.com“30% Wild” podcast episode summary What’s that huge shadow sweeping overhead? We explore the “death from above” that is raptors, and learn how ravens are on the move from legend and myth to your backyard...

Big Bad Imaginary Wolves

by Deftspace | September 19, 2024 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, ReForest, Uncategorized, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Find us where you listen to podcasts at thirtywildpod.com“30% Wild” podcast episode summary Track the Big Bad Wolf from fairy tales and metaphors to the real animal, and learn that everything you think you know about this elusive predator is probably wrong. Where do...

Climate-Proof Garden

by Deftspace | July 29, 2024 | City Wild, Climate Change, Design, Resilience, Sustainable Home, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

Keep your feet dry in the deluge, keep your plants happy in the drought If you're a gardener, you've been here before: plants struggling against record heat, drought, and rain events. We need better ways to raise vegetables that are resilient to rapidly changing...

Ancient Eclipse at Chaco

by Deftspace | April 12, 2024 | City Wild, Ruins, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

A thought after the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, which I was lucky enough to see: In 1097, a total solar eclipse was visible over Chaco Canyon in what is now New Mexico. An artist there recorded the event in this petroglyph. Scientists now know that 1097 was...

The Primordial is Now

by Deftspace | February 1, 2024 | 30% Wild podcast, Behavior, City Wild, Climate Change, ReForest, Resilience, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Primordial North America Close your eyes, and imagine North America before European arrival. Primordial forest. Endless prairies. Wetlands alive with birds. The sheer richness and abundance of life is mind-blowing, difficult to even comprehend. All these things were...

Fight the Doom with Rewilding

by Deftspace | February 1, 2024 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, Climate Change, Design X Deficit, Health | 0 Comments

We’re doomed, right?Tell me- does this sound familiar? The Doom. You know the Doom. It’s what’s circling around you every time you turn on the news or scroll through social media: Ice caps are melting, temperatures are soaring, and everywhere you look, there’s always...

Hey, Cistern!

by Deftspace | January 30, 2024 | City Wild, Climate Change, Design, Resilience, Sustainable Home | 0 Comments

Why would you want a garden cistern? You, or your garden, have outgrown your rain barrel. You want plants that need irrigation, and you don’t want to pay that water bill. You want to use rainwater to irrigate rather than chlorine-treated drinking water. You want to...

Could Passenger Pigeons Come Back?

by Deftspace | October 30, 2023 | City Wild, ReForest, Wildlife | 0 Comments

In this season of zombies and skeletons, know that there's a small group out there working to bring back, aka "de-extinct," passenger pigeons. Like "Jurassic Park," but smaller and flying in gigantic flocks. What could go wrong? Seriously, though, their efforts are a...

How to (Re)Build Your City for Extreme Heat

by Deftspace | July 26, 2023 | City Wild, Climate Change, Design, Design X Deficit, Energy, How to (Re)Build Your City, Infrastructure, Invasives, Planning, Resilience | 0 Comments

1) Trees, trees, trees to reverse heat island, create shade, lessen ozone production 2) Shade structures, especially at bus stops and where people walk or gather 3) Green spaces in every neighborhood, for a respite from the heat 4) Schools, public buildings, churches...

Radish Rage

by Deftspace | June 13, 2023 | City Wild | 0 Comments

An airing of my long-standing grievance about "easy to grow" vegetables that aren't, in a guest post on Gardenrant Every coyote, disappearing farmhouse, and Green Man, Ready for a campfire near you Plus “No Heroes,” a bonus story only in this e-book

Porcine Manifest Destiny

by Deftspace | May 2, 2023 | 30% Wild podcast, City Wild, Invasives, ReForest, Wildlife | 0 Comments

First look at a 30% Wild podcast episode! Each episode will start with a "story," drawn from history, myth, or real life. Here's a snippet from the feral pig story, because you *knew* it was going to start with a feral pig (Yes, 30% Wild will also be about *other*...

Video: Weeds We Want

by Deftspace | April 17, 2023 | City Wild, Climate Change, Design X Deficit, Health, Invasives, Resilience, Video | 0 Comments

This goldenrod wouldn't be any more beautiful if someone planted it, but it's more than just pretty. Weeds like this do a lot for us:

Video: Handful of Junk

by Deftspace | April 17, 2023 | City Wild, Design X Deficit, Infrastructure, Public Art, Ruins, Shrinking Cities, Video | 0 Comments

A video I've lovingly entitled, "Handful of Junk." Making art from found objects is all about where you find the objects. Neglected places make good hunting grounds.

Joining Mastodon

by Deftspace | December 5, 2022 | City Wild, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

A guest post for Tech Tips in the Writers of Non-Fiction Facebook group As Twitter disintegrates, many people are moving to Mastodon. The buzz about Mastodon is that it’s hard to join and to learn if you aren’t a tech genius. I just joined without any trouble, so...

Video: Tree Canopy and…Bears?

by Deftspace | November 4, 2022 | Behavior, City Wild, Design X Deficit, Health, Video, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Couple insights about how to assess your tree canopy and why you might want to. This video may or may not include bears. https://youtu.be/oqnYJzwPr3g

City Wild on Vacation

by Deftspace | March 3, 2021 | City Wild | 0 Comments

Not vacation, really, but hiatus - I'm putting City Wild blog on hold until... Design by Deficit: Neglect and the Accidental City aka the City Wild book comes out! Both paperback and e-book editions will launch this summer, probably late this summer. A lot is...

Even Better Outdoor Spaces for Cold Weather

by Deftspace | October 14, 2020 | #pandemic, City Wild, Design, Health, Winter Places | 0 Comments

Leaves are turning, the days are getting shorter, and COVID is on the rise in most states, including mine. The “everybody outside” strategy was great for reducing coronavirus transmission during the summer, but what about the months ahead? Landscape architects...

But Summer’s Over: Outdoor Spaces for Cold Weather

by Deftspace | September 30, 2020 | #pandemic, City Wild, Design, Health, Winter Places | 0 Comments

Not what we're going for. (Author photo) “But what about winter?” Every conversation about moving activities with people outside ends with this, whether it’s about school, working at home, or anything else. This was true even before coronavirus attacked the planet,...

Work/Learn at Home – Outside Edition, Part 2

by Deftspace | September 2, 2020 | #pandemic, Behavior, City Wild, Design, Health | 0 Comments

(Author photo) This week we’re back to working at home, specifically more about making yourself a great workspace outside. Why now, at the end of the summer? Because, as a lifelong outdoors person, I can tell you September and October are some of the best weather for...

Work/Learn at Home – Outside Edition, Part 1

by Deftspace | August 20, 2020 | #pandemic, City Wild, Design, Energy, Health | 0 Comments

Look, it's your new office! (Author photo) Back in the early part of the lifetime that this pandemic has surely lasted, I posted about working from home. What if you want to do that outside, and take advantage of this global emergency to conference call in the fresh...

Church Outside: Five Ways to Make it Work

by Deftspace | August 13, 2020 | #pandemic, City Wild, Design, Health | 0 Comments

Labyrinths like this one take advantage of outdoor locations. (author photo) Church or other worship services outside is a new 2020 idea that isn't new at all. From a COVID-19 perspective, indoor worship as usual has some problems: lots of people, indoors, in close...

Outdoor School Spaces: Flexibility for the Impossible

by Deftspace | July 22, 2020 | #pandemic, City Wild, Design, Health, Winter Places | 0 Comments

Perfect spot for a small meeting space, outside an elementary school. (Author photo) My sister is a teacher, so my messages are filled with the latest last newest update on her school’s ever-changing plan to reopen in a few weeks, or not, or sort of, or maybe not....

Five #LandArch #Pandemic Projects: Everybody Outside Now

by Deftspace | July 15, 2020 | #pandemic, City Wild, Design, Health | 0 Comments

Quick and easy and getting it done, but c'mon, can't we do this better? (Author photo) At this point, there’s more or less consensus that if you have to be around other people during this pandemic, the best place to be is outside. Ergo countless ad hoc outdoor spaces...

Health boosts from Nature: quick reference for Practitioners

by Deftspace | July 1, 2020 | #pandemic, Behavior, City Wild, Design, Design X Deficit, Health | 0 Comments

You don't need a gorgeous view like this to benefit from nature, but isn't this soothing? (Author photo) There’s never been a better time to keep nature-health benefits at your fingertips if you're in the business of shaping outdoor spaces or activities for people....

Will This Last? Temporary Bike Lanes, Expendable Cars

by Deftspace | June 24, 2020 | #pandemic, City Wild, Infrastructure | 0 Comments

Seeing a lot of talk about whether temporary bike and pedestrian lanes like this will last. Is it a new day for bikes on the American street? No. People want desperately to go back to pre-pandemic normal, and “normal” is not having half your street blocked off...

How to (Not) Speak in Stone

by Deftspace | June 9, 2020 | City Wild, Diversity, Public Art | 0 Comments

What's on this memorial? What's missing? Indianapolis has a Confederate monument? Has anyone told Indy they’re in the north? The story gets weirder when you look into it, and ultimately worse. Yes, Indiana was on the side of the Union during the Civil War,...

More Empty Pedestals

by Deftspace | June 4, 2020 | City Wild, Design, Diversity, Public Art | 0 Comments

Dead white guy, but from Grant's army, not the rebels. You get the idea, though. ( www.stockvault.net) From the fire hose of news about the massive wave of protests following the death of George Floyd comes this: more statues and monuments are coming down. Confederate...

Fast Garden: Homegrown Produce. Right. Now.

by Deftspace | April 17, 2020 | #pandemic, City Wild, Resilience | 0 Comments

Fast salad growing in a sunny window: spinach, arugula, bok choy, and cress. These sprouted in a mere three days in this warm sunny spot. Weeks-long delays, everything out of stock, bizarre substitutions - supermarket deliveries are not meeting this moment. Time to...

Silence on the Highway: Pandemic as Preview

by Deftspace | April 1, 2020 | #pandemic, City Wild, Climate Change, Energy, Infrastructure | 0 Comments

A normally busy state highway near my house (author photo). Stop. Listen. Wherever you are right now, can you hear traffic noise? While we wait for science to save us from COVID-19, I’m killing some time walking (alone) on a quiet street. All the streets are...

Work from Home: Tips from Twenty Years Out of the Office

by Deftspace | March 19, 2020 | #pandemic, City Wild | 0 Comments

Another day at the "office," right next to my living room and inside the front door. I’m an old, old hand at working from home. Been doing it at least part-time for almost 20 years. I know this will shock everyone who’s struggling to adjust, but at this point, I much...

Future Forest Dwellers: Reforest for Climate

by Deftspace | January 16, 2020 | City Wild, Climate Change, ReForest | 0 Comments

A slice of (re)forest between a Connecticut high school parking lot and adjacent backyards. (Photo by author) Also posted on Medium. Plant a tree, save humanity. Or rather, plant untold millions of trees and give humanity a fighting chance against climate change....

Haunting the Forest: Super(hero)natural

by Deftspace | July 16, 2019 | City Wild, Climate Change, ReForest, Ruins, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Once a road, now a trail. The stone wall remains. (Photo by author) Take a look at this picture. Where is this trail? Oregon? The Boundary Waters? Maybe Shenandoah? Nope, it’s just an ordinary trail in Connecticut. My state of residence for two years now is a...

Spooky Hollows: Fear and Protecting Nature

by Deftspace | October 18, 2018 | Brownfields, City Wild, Design, Design X Deficit, Health, Planning, Ruins, Vacancy, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Image from pixabay.com. although honestly this could be any house in Connecticut. It’s October. Every door creaks, every picture has eyes that follow you, every call is coming from inside the house. Night falls sooner, mist swirls, dry leaves - or footsteps? - whisper...

The Vanishing Infrastructural Wild, Updated

by Deftspace | October 2, 2018 | City Wild, Climate Change, Energy, Infrastructure, Transgressive Use, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Photo by author News broke last week about NantEnergy's installations of rechargeable zinc-air batteries (aka energy storage) at communications towers, including one in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The NYT article features this eye-catching sentence:"As a...

Teacup in the Deluge: Climate Change and your Yard

by Deftspace | September 12, 2018 | City Wild, Climate Change, Design, Design X Deficit, Health, Infrastructure, Resilience, Sustainable Home | 0 Comments

I'm writing a section for my next book about climate change predictions for the US by region. Wanna know what those predictions are? Look out the window. 2018 has been a real preview of the future, with above-average temperatures everywhere, soaking rains in the...

Shrubbiness: When a tree isn’t a tree

by Deftspace | July 25, 2018 | Behavior, City Wild, Climate Change, Design X Deficit, Invasives, Shrinking Cities | 0 Comments

Photo by author This post is a preview of a sidebar in my upcoming book about the neglected city, Design by Deficit. Also posted on Medium. Syracuse, New York, the city where I used to live, is a shrubby place. By that I mean that unmaintained land within...

Low-Lyme Landscape

by Deftspace | July 10, 2018 | Behavior, City Wild, Design X Deficit, Health, Wildlife | 0 Comments

This adorable little fox kit wants to grow up and eat Lyme-infected mice! (Photo by author) This post is a preview of a sidebar in my upcoming book about the neglected city, Design by Deficit. Also posted on Medium. If you spend a lot of time outdoors, like I...

Author Interview on Book #1 (and a little Book #2)

by Deftspace | April 5, 2018 | City Wild, Diversity, Publications | 0 Comments

My interview about Immigrant Pastoral (my first book) dropped today, further promoting the paperback edition. The last answer in the interview is a preview of my second book, the currently-in-progress Design by Deficit. Readers of this blog will know that as the City...

Building without Builders: Immigrants, Revitalization, and the Wall

by Deftspace | March 28, 2018 | City Wild, Diversity, Publications | 0 Comments

Strip mall in Indianapolis. (Author photo) Quick, how do you build a huge wall without anyone to build it? Consider: as the US edges closer to building a border wall, a newly released report from the home building industry reports that about one in four workers in...

Resilient Power is the New Black

by Deftspace | February 23, 2018 | City Wild, Climate Change, Design, Energy, Infrastructure, Resilience | 0 Comments

Image from author's collection Now that America’s great again, the Clean Power Plan is in limbo, we’ve got a brand-new tariff on solar panels, and clean coal will save us all. Or something like that. When policy and regulation aren’t your friend, there’s still...

Wild & Healthy: Urban Nature at Work for Mental Health and Climate Action

by Deftspace | October 11, 2017 | City Wild, Climate Change, Health, Infrastructure, Invasives, Vacancy | 0 Comments

(Photo by author) Also posted on Medium.(Based on my November 3, 2017, presentation at “Community Renewal and its Discontents,” a conference at Albany Law School’s Government Law Center) Picture a vacant lot. If nothing comes to mind, the one in the photo will...

“The Healthy Wild City” Lecture 11.3.17

by Deftspace | October 10, 2017 | City Wild, Climate Change, Health, Lectures, Shrinking Cities | 0 Comments

If you're going to be in Albany (New York) on November 3, stop by and say hello! I'm speaking about the health aspects of urban wilds on the panel on Shrinking Spaces and Community Development. Keynote looks great, and... it's free! For a bonus point, City Wild...

New Study: Greenspace and Stress

by Deftspace | August 29, 2017 | Behavior, City Wild, Health, Publications, Student Work | 0 Comments

I'm pleased to announce I have a new study out this week, co-authored with former student Meghan Hazer and two Upstate Medical University faculty, Margaret Formica and Chris Morley. "The relationship between self-reported exposure to greenspace and human stress in...

Single-Track Saves the City

by Deftspace | August 22, 2017 | Behavior, Brownfields, City Wild, Climate Change, Design, Health, Infrastructure, Planning, Transgressive Use, Wildlife | 0 Comments

Single-track trail traversing a "wild" urban area; in this case, a former quarry. Also posted on Medium. Call it biking the urban wild. Portland, Oregon, is developing a citywide off-road trail network, called the Portland Off-road Cycling Master Plan....

Immigrants, Cities, and Why You Should Care

by Deftspace | August 21, 2017 | City Wild, Diversity, Publications | 0 Comments

In celebration of the new softcover edition of my first book Immigrant Pastoral: Midwestern Landscapes and Mexican-American Neighborhoods, I've written a short essay setting the book within the context of the current (acrimonious) conversation about immigration and...

Empty Pedestals

by Deftspace | August 18, 2017 | City Wild, Design, Diversity, Public Art | 0 Comments

The statues are coming down. Some are surprised how easy it is to physically remove a statue, or just pull it down. It’s true: removing a bronze statue can be as simple as cutting through a handful of bolts, far less effort than it takes to reach consensus about...

Community Microgrids and Urban Revitalization

by Deftspace | April 7, 2017 | City Wild, Design, Energy, Infrastructure, Resilience | 0 Comments

A new guest column out today in Microgrid Knowledge, featuring the big story from the microgrid-revitalization-replicability study I did last year at Syracuse University. Read the whole thing here.

Words Don’t Make a Wall

by Deftspace | March 3, 2017 | City Wild, Design, Infrastructure | 0 Comments

commons.wikimedia.org Lots of talk these days about a wall on our southern border, but walls aren’t built with words. They’re built with concrete, masonry, reinforcing materials, excavation, drainage…the everyday palette of landscape architecture practice. It’s not...

Immigrants and rustbelt revitalization

by Deftspace | February 6, 2017 | City Wild, Diversity, Publications, Shrinking Cities | 0 Comments

Blaming immigrants is nothing new. As a nation composed almost entirely of immigrants (brought by force or by choice) and their descendants, xenophobia has shadowed the American immigrant dream across the centuries. We honor the grit and drive of our own forebears...

Crows in the City

by Deftspace | January 13, 2017 | Brownfields, City Wild, Design, Planning, Transgressive Use, Wildlife | 0 Comments

www.helenair.com It’s that time of year again - time for crows to congregate in the most unfortunate of city parks, streets, and yards. Sinister seems invented to describe the atmosphere of hundreds of crows roosting in the darkness above you, rustling and softly...

Four Ways Forward: Clean Energy after Trump

by Deftspace | November 28, 2016 | City Wild, Climate Change, Energy, Infrastructure, Publications | 0 Comments

www.clipartbest.com There’s an absurdity to releasing a report on community microgrids the day before Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2016 presidential election. Nonetheless, Neighborhood Microgrids: Replicability and Revitalization, presenting the...

Changing architecture’s climate

by Deftspace | November 1, 2016 | City Wild, Climate Change, Design, Energy, Infrastructure, Planning, Resilience | 0 Comments

A post in response to The World in 2050: Creating/Imagining Just Climate Futures, an online conference organized by the University of California- Santa Barbara Environmental Humanities Initiative I am inundated with climate change talk this week, the sea-level...

The world in 2050 #ehi16

by Deftspace | October 24, 2016 | City Wild, Climate Change, Lectures, Student Work | 0 Comments

About twenty minutes ago, "The World in 2050: Creating/Imagining Just Climate Futures" opened. This is a totally online conference about, well, visions of just climate futures - how we might all live better lives in a warmer world. I tell you about this because: If...

Design(ers’) Thinking

by Deftspace | August 18, 2016 | City Wild, Design, Lectures | 0 Comments

(A written iteration of some of the material from my March 8, 2016, talk “Disruption and Design Thinking,” in the Syracuse University School of Architecture Spring 2016 Lecture Series. This is post #1 of 2, with a second on Disruption to follow…soon.)...

Climate Change and the Shape of the City

by Deftspace | July 25, 2016 | Brownfields, City Wild, Climate Change, Infrastructure | 0 Comments

Written version of my August 10 talk to the English for Graduate Studies Programs for Fulbright Scholars, through the English Language Institute at Syracuse University. What does climate change have to do with the shape of the city? Climate change is one of the...

Studio|Next: Final Poster Session on Energy in the Landscape

by Deftspace | May 3, 2016 | #citybynext, City Wild, Design, Energy, Student Work | 0 Comments

Snacks, drinks, intriguing new ideas about how to accomplish REV's goals on actual pieces of land in Syracuse, free parking - how could you refuse? See you there-

Save the Date: 5.5.16 Studio|Next Poster Session

by Deftspace | April 26, 2016 | #citybynext, City Wild, Design, Energy, Student Work | 0 Comments

Final poster session, featuring student designs for Energy in the Landscape, bringing REV4NY’s goals to Syracuse’s urban spaces. 5.5.16, 4-6 pm. Syracuse Center of Excellence. If you're reading this, you're welcome to come: past students, well-wishers, community...

Studio|Next: Final Project: Energy in the Landscape, Part II

by Deftspace | April 18, 2016 | #citybynext, City Wild, Design, Energy | 0 Comments

(Posted here a bit late - SD) It has to start somewheret has to start sometimeWhat better place than herewhat better time than now?(R.A.t.M., “Guerilla Radio”)This studio began with Joe Romm’s observation that climate change will be the big story of the next 25 years,...

#Inequalityis infrastructure failure.

by Deftspace | March 25, 2016 | City Wild, Health, Infrastructure, Shrinking Cities | 0 Comments

In case you’ve somehow missed it, our public infrastructure is falling apart, especially in urban areas, especially in older parts of the country. You’ve seen the headlines, including this recent one from Philip Kennicott at the Washington Post, and some of you will...

Disruption and Design Thinking – Lecture this Tuesday

by Deftspace | March 4, 2016 | City Wild | 0 Comments

The promise of design thinking for solving big problems outside design, plus some new ideas about neglect, urban systems, and cities like Flint. Coming soon to a blog post near you, but get it on campus first!

Studio|Next: Final Project: Energy in the Landscape, Part I

by Deftspace | March 4, 2016 | #citybynext, City Wild, Climate Change, Design, Energy, Shrinking Cities, Student Work | 0 Comments

“[New York State’s] energy plan's goals for 2030 are a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from the energy sector compared with 1990 levels, a 50 percent share of electric power from renewable sources and a 23 percent reduction in energy use by...

Poster session on campus this Thursday!

by sldieterlen | February 22, 2016 | #citybynext, City Wild, Student Work | 0 Comments

Come join us if you can - for an hour or a few minutes. Work on display will be for the System Restart project, for which I previously posted the briefs.

Studio|Next Project 2: System Restart, Part II

by sldieterlen | February 11, 2016 | #citybynext, City Wild, Design, Planning, Shrinking Cities, Student Work | 0 Comments

Cities are systems, systems within systems. Government, infrastructure, food, healthcare, education, taxes, ecosystems - these are just a few examples. We live in a time characterized by dysfunction and lack of investment (#neglect) in many of these systems. Some of...

Flint: Water + Lead + Infrastructure

by sldieterlen | February 5, 2016 | City Wild, Diversity, Health, Shrinking Cities | 0 Comments

If you've been following the news about the drinking water crisis in Flint, Michigan, or if you haven't, but you care about cities, their most vulnerable residents, public policy, politics, power, and the dismal state of public infrastructure, check this out. A simple...

Studio|Next Project 2: System Restart

by sldieterlen | February 2, 2016 | #citybynext, City Wild, Design, Planning, Resilience, Shrinking Cities, Student Work | 0 Comments

Cities are systems, systems within systems. Government, infrastructure, food, healthcare, education, taxes, ecosystems - these are just a few examples. We live in a time characterized by dysfunction and lack of investment (#neglect) in many of these systems. Some of...

Studio|Next Project 1: Disintegration

by Deftspace | January 22, 2016 | #citybynext, City Wild, Design, Student Work | 0 Comments

All things tend toward disorder, including built work. In the end, everything falls apart. Nowhere is this more apparent than in built work in outdoor environments, where weaknesses in construction methods and materials, the extremes of nature, and the creative...

Studio|Next Project 1: Disintegration

by sldieterlen | January 22, 2016 | City Wild | 0 Comments

All things tend toward disorder, including built work.In the end, everything falls apart. Nowhere is this more apparent than in built work in outdoor environments, where weaknesses in construction methods and materials, the extremes of nature, and the creative...

Neglect: Covert Sculptor and Next Big Thing

by Deftspace | January 21, 2016 | #citybynext, City Wild, Design, Planning, Ruins, Shrinking Cities, Student Work | 0 Comments

"America's G.P.A.: D+. Estimated investment needed by 2020: $3.6 trillion." No one’s surprised by that quote, right? We hear this at least once every four years, when the American Society of Civil Engineers releases its report card. The news is always bad, because...

Heat: Faux Controversy and Next Big Thing

by sldieterlen | January 20, 2016 | City Wild, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

http://unisci24.com/ This post begins with the foundational assumption - foundational fact, really - that the world is warming. Our climate is changing, and that’s not an assumption, that’s a fact. Last year was the second warmest year on record in the US; 2012 was...

The Complete Collection from Season 1

Ebook cover, with title in dripping black text on orange banners, black and white raven logo, and white block text with author name. Background is a mysterious yet lush forest.

Every coyote, disappearing farmhouse, and Green Man,

Ready for a campfire near you

Plus “No Heroes,” a bonus story only in this e-book

White block text with filmy silhouette of a raven; orange lower case text below. Background is a lush painterly image of a path through the forest