A Note on my Links

I have two categories:

1. Smart blogs -- often about the built environment
and
2. Not a Blog but still interesting.

The purpose is to distinguish between very personal sites, "loose," updated frequently -- "Blogs" -- which concern themselves a fair amount, but by no means exclusively, with the built environment,

and

"Not a Blog" sites which are exclusively about the built environment but which are more institutional, "bureaucratic," (in the best sense of the word), practically useful and modified less often.

(The irreplaceable PLANETIZEN -- always good for a lead -- is an unusual mixture: impersonal but constantly updated by its contributors, like an informal "wire-service" -- what a quaint phrase, that. I'll comment more about particular "Not a Blog" sites as time goes on.)

The latter sites ("Not a Blog") are terrific sources of other links, organizational momentum, contacts, group activity...you get the point. These are the people who can cohere sufficient institutional prestige to jockey into a Congressional Hearing.

The former -- Blogs -- are individualistic, anecdotal, "I'll write what I like," a bit more harum-scarum. (This is a Blog, just to clarify the location of this room should anyone ever had even the remotest question.) It's their unsubmerged personality which gives Blogs charm, or, cause for ignoring them as one's taste suggests. Blogs are less constrained by an institutional agenda.

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My link list does not include a great number of otherwise extremely astute sites (Blogs especially) because these folks do not, either at all or even to a significant degree, focus on the built environment. (Sometime I wonder if they even know such a thing exists.)

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The issue of whom to link is, as you can imagine, a delicate issue. "I linked to him; why didn't he reciprocate." My approach is that this is not Congress or the House of Commons; I reject the notion of "Blogrolling." (That's of course an insight into why this is a Blog and not an institutional site; and don't get me wrong -- I admire the organizational people. In our society, they are the ones who wield the power because they are able to form/maintain ongoing coalitions which can walk the corridors of power because they represent groups. I just wish I could do it.)

Some Bloggers mention the built environment now-and-again; but I decided that I had to create a bright-line of fairly regular and substantial.

Btw, the fact that not all the sites on the old City Comforts Blog site are shown here is simply a function that I haven't gotten to bringing everything over. In time I will.

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Also, please do not be surprised if this Blog looks different from time to time. The increased functionality of Typepad (which hosts this Blog now) prompts me to keep experimenting. If it starts to get annoying, please tell me but I'll probably continue anyway.