John Kamp

Sep 10, 2024 | resilience.org | John Kamp

In the fall of 2019, I was tasked with taking a somewhat unsightly butterfly garden made up of native plants of the prairie and completely rethinking it. Like many smaller habitat landscapes, the garden was the victim of good intentions that failed to deliver in the looks department. Rather than looking the hoped-for (and promised by the nursery) wild and free, the space ended up looking weedy and unkempt.

Aug 6, 2024 | commonedge.org | James Rojas |John Kamp

For eight years, we’ve lived in a 350-square-foot apartment in a fourplex in Oakland, and we aren’t particularly interested in upsizing. When we tell people this, their jaws usually drop, and they follow with some variation on the theme of I’d kill my partner if we lived in such a small space; Where do you put all your stuff?; or Doesn’t it feel claustrophobic?

Jun 6, 2024 | strongtowns.org | James Rojas |John Kamp

When trying to make a walkable and vibrant street, urban planners often think in terms of hard infrastructure like road width and crosswalks. But soft infrastructure, specifically flowers and other colorful plant life, plays an important role as well.

Jun 5, 2024 | 1340wraw.iheart.com | James Rojas |John Kamp |Ron Wilson

Urban planners, designers, and civic leaders often think of the presence of certain kinds of hard infrastructure as influencing how walkable and vibrant a street or neighborhood is: wide sidewalks, narrow roadways, buildings with visually interesting ground floors, curb bulb-outs, crosswalks, stoplights, and so on.

May 28, 2024 | commonedge.org | James Rojas |John Kamp

Urban planners, designers, and civic leaders often think of the presence of certain kinds of hard infrastructure as influencing how walkable and vibrant a street or neighborhood is: wide sidewalks, narrow roadways, buildings with visually interesting ground floors, curb bulb-outs, crosswalks, stoplights, and so on.