The Potentiality

John Horn's Website for Community Builders

Month: January 2011

Urban Densification and the Death of the House Party

On many an occasion, friends in Vancouver have crammed upwards of 30 people into their 692 square foot apartments. And a few times since moving to Vancity in 2008, I’ve seen many of those same 30 people party in a fairly spacious household setting, where – throughout the course of the evening – components of the party will actually take on identities all their own: the kitchen might turn into a cauldron of political debate, a guitar-playing sing-along might erupt in the livingroom, a game of croquet might take place on the lawn, and people might check out wedding photos on the computer in the den.

Who’s better at fighting crime – Superman or Visa?

In the US, the crime rate is down. Significantly. While crime had once soared sharply in the late 1960s and early 1970s (does anyone remember the days of the “crack epidemic”), it has since declined steeply since 1993. The marked…

A Critique of the Metro Vancouver Sustainable Region Initiative

My first assignment for a course I’m taking at UBC – it’s called Building Sustainable Communities and is taught by the awesome Sarah Northcott – is to critique the Metro Vancouver Sustainable Regional Initiative (SRI) in about 500 words. I…

Surfing – Yachting for the Masses

There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Rat, Wind in the Willows I’m the first to admit that my yachting days a still a ways off, so in the…

The History of Work Series Concludes

So there it is. This concludes The History of Work Series on the The Potentiality. Godfrey and I have researched, analyzed, evaluated, and delivered results on, first, the nature of work as it relates to community and, second, the best and…