For the first episode of our new season of shows, we spent the third week of June in the Española Valley of New Mexico, a place none of us had been to before.  It was truly eye-opening and exciting to spend time with farmers, santeros, mechanics, therapists, professors, oral historians, addicts, cashiers, musicians and poets…

The reason we ventured southwest-ward in the first place was because of water.  Specifically the way in which the people of the valley, for well over 400 years, have thought about, shared and used water.  In New Mexico, there are more than 1,000 acequias, which are not only man-made irrigation ditches, but also an entire culture and decentralized democracy in and of themselves. (more…)

Hello, Fellow Re:Union-Goers

A few weeks ago Brenton, our marvelous multimedia maker, told me about this outstanding idea he had. Now, Brenton’s an idea man through-and-through. When he’s not brainstorming ways to capture that elusive SOTRU story through the creative use of media, he’s strategizing effective ways to involve our audience and encourage them to tell stories about their communities. So, a clever concept from his area of the office is nothing new. But his plan for The My Community in One Picture Project, well this idea is absolutely genius. (more…)

Whether by default or design, all of us on the SOTRU team are gradually becoming city experts. With each fresh location we go to, we accumulate new perspectives on how different places are approaching a frequently overlapping set of challenges, be it how to stem a rise in crime or reverse a loss of jobs, halt a wave of foreclosures or repair an urban infrastructure that’s seen better days.  What if to solve some of these problems we turned not to the usual handful of urban planners and economic development honchos… but to a group of physicists? (more…)