Friday, April 20, 2007

Welcome

This blog was established by the family of Richard Meier, planner and futurist, to celebrate his life and work. We also hope that it will be a way to connect people who are interested in the wide range of foresightful ideas that engaged Dick all of his life.

The public memorial service for Dick was held on April 15th in Berkeley, at the College of Environmental Design, University of University of California. We were delighted and moved by the stories from family and former students who described how Dick’s ideas influenced the way they viewed the world and the work that they had pursued. We recorded the comments. They will be transcribed and we will post selected pieces here.

In addition to comments from the many people who attended this event, we have also received email messages from afar from former colleagues and students. We will re-post selected portions of those messages here. Unfortunately, the date of the memorial service coincided with the American Planning Association conference so many of the faculty from the College were unable to participate. We hope that they and Berkeley colleagues will add their comments to the blog later.

At the ceremony, many people expressed enthusiastic interest in finding ways to encourage work on ideas  (Dick's and those of others) that could  lead to a more peaceful, just and sustainable world future. We would like this blog to be a point of contact for those interested in collaborating to develop ideas, plans, and projects. To start with we will be adding links to websites that describe work that you are doing or that extend and apply Dick's ideas in other ways.

Next steps:

To read the compiled comments
Click on the comments line at the end of this message.

Add your own comments
Clicking on the comment link also opens up a new dialog box for you to enter your text. The default identity for comments is lifeworks211 (Andrea's gmail address). To post your comment under your own name, click on the "other" button under the comment window and enter your name in the box.

Spread the word about the blog
If you know other folks that you think would be interested in contributing to the blog, click on the envelope logo at the bottom of the message and fill in the contact information.

Want to contribute but are uncertain about how to manage the blog technology?
Send your messages to Andrea Meier (ameier@email.unc.edu) and she will be happy to post them for you.


We look forward to hearing from you!

Robin Standish (Wife)
Karen Meier Reeds-Princeton, NJ (Daughter)
Andrea Meier-Chapel Hill, NC (Daughter & Blog manager)
Alan Meier-Berkeley, CA (Son)