About

When I regstered the domain publicrealm.com, Bill Clinton was president and people were freaking out about Y2K–not the specter of terrorism. Chances are, I was busy drinking the dot com kool-aid, obssessing over the burgeoning urban planning movement, New Urbanism, and still riding my skateboard a lot.

The original goal with the site was to provide a clearinghouse for news, commentary, and ideas centered around city and regional planning. I soon learned that there were much better resources out there and I wanted to bore my small handful of readers with content about topics other than the virtues of fighting sprawl. A blog, basically.

About Me

It seems like I’m on a life-long tour of southern college towns. Started in Lexington, Kentucky, moved to Austin, Texas, and now my wife and I are sneezing a lot in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Although we’ve hated Duke at least since March 28, 1992, we are slowly becoming Tar Heel fans.

Living in blissfully blue bubbles in red states has probably colored my political and cultural worldview. However, like many others, I’m looking forward to the passing of this era of echo chamber-driven polarization fueled by a real and perceived culture war.

Some interests: skateboarding, ideas that need to be companies, shoes, web 2.0, unnecessary worrying, Tex-Mex, BBQ, intersection of science and religion, reading blogs and columns from some of my favorite people–folks who aren’t so easily pinned down, such as Andrew Sullivan. What else? Just subscribe to the blog and you’ll have an idea pretty quickly. And please feel free to get in touch if you ever need to call me out on my shit.