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Recap: Anthony Bourdain’s Season 2 Finale: Parts Unknown Detroit

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In the season two finale of Parts Unknown, CNN’s Anthony Bourdain explores the Motor City’s past, present and future as he walks through ruins of the abandoned Packard Plant, helps to mow overgrown city parks, and enjoys food at Detroit’s off the beaten path restaurants.

Anthony Bourdain on Detroit: It’s where nearly everything American and great came from. The things the whole world wanted, made here.

Bourdain:

Maybe the worm started to turn here: the Packard Automotive Plant. Opened in 1903, it was considered the most advanced plant of its time. 3.5 million square feet. Now one man lives here: Mr. Al Hill.

Al Hill

It takes a whole village to raise an individual, and it takes an entire world to support one city. And when one city is suffering, or when a community is suffering, the entire world should help pitch in and help elevate it, instead of sit there and stare at it.

What about the entrepreneurs and artists changing the city, one block at a time? You have to start with that Detroit is a great city, and worth saving.

You’re appreciated in Detroit. Guess what? We like good food too. We hear from people all the time that say they’ve moved back to Detroit.

In Detroit, police and fire department services are reduced. They turn to each other for help. Detroit has a reputation as a tough town. But they don’t give up.

Meet the Mower Gang

Cleaning up the abandoned parks and playlots in Detroit. When the city announced they were closing 72 parks, Tom Nardone bought a mower and started mowing the lawns at the parks.

And now there’s a Mower Gang that mows the parks.

Urban Agriculture

We can create a more vibrant economically strong community.

What will Detroit look like in 20 years? In 50 years?

That’s not just a Detroit question.

That’s an America question.

What People Thought About Bourdain’s Show on Detroit

November 8, 2013: Weekly Roundup of Web Development and Design Resources

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Greenfield Village walkway by the river

Temperatures dropped this week in our area, and we faced the real possibility of that four letter “s” word last night. Thank goodness I didn’t see any snow this morning. Hope you’re enjoying the weather in your area.

In this week’s roundup of web development and design resources, you’ll find recommendations for what to include in your user experience portfolio, read a very interesting interview with a scholar that I hope encourages you to rethink your approach to design projects, learn how to implement the advanced controls in the WordPress Theme Customizer, and more.

If you’re interested, the photo above was taken earlier this week along the river walkway at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan.

Favorite Tweet

User Experience

Accessibility

  • The White Cane as Technology: If you read any article in this week’s roundup, this is the one I recommend. This interview from The Atlantic with scholar Georgina Kleege on technology, design, and disabilities made me pause and reconsider my approach to design projects. One of my favorite excerpts from the post:

    I like the term “people with print disabilities,” which encompasses people with visual impairments as well as people with a wide range of cognitive processing issues—various learning disabilities—that affect the ability to process standard print material.

    Georgina Kleege

  • It’s Hard to be Optimistic About the New DOT Web and Kiosks Regulations: The new U.S. Department of Transportation web and kiosk regulations for airlines and airport kiosks allow airlines too much time for compliance. Example: it will be 10 years before 25% of kiosks are required to be accessible.
  • Disability Studies: A New Normal: Twenty years ago, the field of disability studies didn’t exist in higher education. It does now, and it’s growing.

WordPress

Responsive Design

CSS and HTML

  • The Four Minute Prototype: Adding Interactivity: In his second Livetyping post on HTML prototyping course for UXers, Martin Polley walks you through adding an interactive form to a responsive web page. Note: adding the interactive form will take you longer than four minutes.
  • Which CSS Measurements To Use When: Find out why Dudley Storey, the author of Pro CSS3 Animation, suggests you use em, ex or rem for typography. And why you shouldn’t use rem if you need to support IE8.
  • cite and blockquote – reloaded: You can now include cite within blockquote elements (which always made sense to me). Check the comments for good questions on usage.

What I Found Interesting

  • Freebie: Nice Things Icon Set (128 Icons, PNG + AI Source): Thanks to Chris Behr for this wonderful set of 128 original illustrations; the set comes complete with original source Illustrator file, complete with named layers.
  • Learn To Search: Truth. This came out last month, but I missed it. Over 95% of the conferences I attend have a majority of male speakers. Joanne McNeil and Divya Manion share some simple steps male conference organizers can take to change that ratio.
  • Free Resources for Creating a Flat Design: Great collection of resources for user interface kits, icons, web and smartphone templates, WordPress themes, and tutorials.
  • Review: Lightbeam Firefox: My friend Virginia DeBolt reviews Mozilla’s new Firefox privacy add-on, Lightbeam, which allows users to see a real-time visualisation of every site visited and every third-party active on that site.

Help Us Help Molly Holzschlag

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Molly Holzschlag presenting on open web at Refresh DetroitRarely does the web community join forces for a single cause.

But they did this week as the call went out to help one of our own, Molly Holzschlag, as she fights a rare liver disease.

Molly, known to many for her dedication to moving the web forward through her work on the open web, web standards, CSS, and accessibility, needs financial support to pay for health insurance coverage.

My personal story about Molly goes back to when I decided to work on the web. Her book on web design was one of the first books I read, and guided my work in web design and development.

Two years ago, I made a personal connection with Molly when I invited her to speak at Refresh Detroit. We had a great time talking about the open web, accessibility and Detroit.

If you work on the web, you’ve benefited from Molly’s work. She’s worked with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Standards Project (WaSP), and worked directly with CERN, AOL, Microsoft, BBC, Opera, and Netscape to ensure browsers support modern standards.

As word about the fundraising campaign spread via Twitter and Facebook yesterday, Molly’s friends, supporters, and readers of her over 30 books heard about the campaign.

Just before noon EST yesterday, the fundraising goal of $25,000 had been reached and surpassed: $25,219 had been donated by 285 people in 20 hours.

Molly Holzschlag health insurance donation page with number of donors and amount

The response has been overwhelming as supporters around the world continue to donate funds to the campaign.

Molly helped to make the web better for all of us. It’s your turn to help her. Donate. Spread the word through a tweet, Facebook update or blog post.

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