NOLAbound Applicant Details

In what city do you currently reside?

Boston, MA

What do you love the most about where you live?

Boston is where I started two companies and I have found it to be a great place for progressively minded entrepreneurs.  The intersection of the academic and professional communities provides excellent opportunities to network with peers who can challenge and evolve your ideas.  It is a city of substance over style, understated in fashion but abundant with intellect.  In a single day I can collaborate on how to finance and build the green buildings of today with seasoned pragmatic professionals and then head over to Cambridge for an inspiring lecture on the sustainable technologies of tomorrow.

In what other cities have you lived?

Santa Barbara, Ithaca, Florence, Boston

What is/was your favorite city and why?

I don’t have a favorite city.  I like different cities for different reasons and at different times.  I like relaxing in the barefoot lifestyle of my hometown, Santa Barbara.  I thrive on collaborating with the people I meet in Boston.  I am amused by the randomly eccentric people I meet in New York.  I see challenges and opportunities in cities like New Orleans and Detroit.  I loved the slow lifestyle I had in Florence.  I was fascinated by the mini self-organizing systems that that I saw in the chaos of Lagos.

What do you hope to gain from NOLAbound?

I lead a team of designers that entered and won the 2010 Natural Talent Design Competition sponsored by the U.S. Green Building Council. Our winning design was for an affordable LEED platinum home that is now being constructed in the Broadmoor neighborhood of New Orleans by the Salvation Army’s EnviRenew.  We have published the design on freegreen.com where it has been downloaded by thousands of people all over America. This trip is a great opportunity to get feedback on the construction.  The cultural immersion combined with a collaborative experience would help us better service this region.

What is your overall opinion of New Orleans?

In New Orleans I experienced a layered complexity and cultural plurality that was positively exhibited in cuisine, music, and architecture and negatively in a milieu of bureaucratic, financial, and technical challenges facing the progressive rebuilding of the damaged areas.
When leveraged successfully, the unique qualities seem to engender a fierce loyalty from its citizens.  I like the quirky qualities but wonder how the novelty would evolve if they were experienced daily rather than occasionally.  Growing up in Santa Barbara taught me that tourism is great, but a city should be built for its citizens not just for its guests.

Single most important issue facing New Orleans?

Difficult challenges are not singular but rather involve interconnected issues that span professional disciplines. On my last trip, I heard about a family who lost their home during Katrina. They received compensation but the assessed value of the home they lost was insufficient to replace it with new construction. They want to stay in their community and rebuild but need a coordinated approach to design, engineering and financing that considers the added value of sustainable and durable design to insure that the rebuilt home is a better whole rather than a fraction of the past.

Community Response: