We highlight here some great articles we’ve read this week dealing with art, creative placemaking, and building great communities. You’re sure to find some inspiration to make your life and our community even better!

• An Artist Bringing Hidden Communities to Light: “I want to display humanity and beauty rolled up in a larger message, whether it be via nuance or defiant means, to challenge the viewer to deny these qualities in my subjects.”

• The Onion Has a Little Fun With Our Priorities: In a huge blow to the already neglected varsity team, the Lowell High School football program found its future season in jeopardy this week after administrators allocated $500,000 of school funds to the theater department’s upcoming production of Little Women.

• Refuge and Prospect Found on the Front Porch: “A house without a front porch,” he proclaimed, “is as insignificant as a book without a title page.”

• The Case for Slower Cities: “When people start driving at a certain speed, they lose awareness of where they are.… Where this gets reflected in urbanism is the more we create spaces where people move fast, the less they understand about what those spaces are.”