StimulusWatch and the Real American Housing Crisis

A couple of weeks ago, Drew posted about StimulusWatch, a site that lists all of the local projects in the United States that have been publicly announced as candidates for federal stimulus funds and lets the public vote on each project's merit. As luck would have it, my job involves researching construction projects, and I've been spending almost a month now combing through SW for several hours a day, looking for potential building projects. From what I've observed, it seems doubtful that the site will have any major impact on how stimulus dollars are spent ("Pork" is probably the most-used word in the very angry, uninformed comment sections no matter what state or city you're viewing). But SW does provide an opportunity for people working on the local level to gauge how their neighbors feel about a wide variety of public projects and services.

In the Energy category, for instance, one can see how effective the green movement has been on public opinion. Whereas a few short years ago Energy projects would undoubtably have been fewer in number and much lower in popularity, the Energy category seems to be one of the most popular, regardless of state or city, with the +/- ratio around half and half -- about the same as the ratio for Streets & Roads! Folks in small towns seem just as likely now to favor energy retrofits to their town hall and the addition of solar panels to school and library rooftops as urban and suburban Americans. People are still skeptical of hybrid vehicles, though, with many requests for money for hybrid or alternative energy-fueled municipal fleets meeting staunch resistance. But overall, the mainstreaming of energy efficiency efforts seems to have been a wide success.

It is seeing this shift that makes me hopeful that we can reverse what is undoubtedly the ugliest trend that I've noticed from coast to coast: the outright rejection of Housing projects. Items with "senior" or "demolition" in the title notwithstanding, Housing projects receive negative vote ratios so consistently that it's as if there was some sort of unspoken rule barring people from voting anything but "No." Even more disturbing than the negative vote ratios are the comments left by mostly anonymous posters at the bottom of each page. Affordable and public housing is called some terrible things, and there is more than anyone's fair share of racism, classism, and willful ignorance. Public housing in America, it is plain to see here, has still not recovered from the havoc wreaked by the slum-clearance-brought tower projects of the 1950s and 60s. Much like with Wall Street, American public housing is experiencing a crisis of confidence.

It would seem that, as much as we need the money to build units for the thousands of people who have lost or are about to lose their homes, it might not be a terrible idea to spend some of HUD's budget on increasing public awareness of the different kinds of housing available nowadays. Stigma attached to terms like "public housing" and "affordable housing" undoubtedly hampers efforts to create sustainable mixed-use communities, a contemporary goal of most major urban housing authorities, by keeping middle- and upper-income residents whose presence facilitates that integration at bay. The focus for housing advocates and agencies is no longer on concentrating poverty, but on economic integration -- and if it's not, it damn well should be. Without changing the conversation, attempts to tackle America's shortage of affordable housing will likely be uneven at best.

For anyone interested in transportation issues (Transit, Airports, Streets & Roads, Amtrak), Community Development, Energy, Housing, Public Safety, Schools, or Water infrastructure, StimulusWatch provides an opportunity to better understand the challenges facing those fields. Whether you're for or against the federal stimulus package, that opportunity shouldn't be missed.


(Photo from Flickr users TheeErin and andyandrew. The original full-sized versions can be viewed by clicking the photos.)

Q&A with the “Mayor” of Opportunity City

MILWAUKEE, March 32, 2010 (IP*) – Ronald Dykes is executive director of Opportunity City, a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting poverty in Milwaukee. Housed in what was once a sprawling steel fabrication plant in the heart of one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, the organization is generating lots of buzz in policy and academic circles across the country for its innovative initiatives.

Q. Opportunity City isn’t a city; it’s a non-profit group. Everyone calls you “mayor,” but your title is executive director. What’s up with the city shtick?

A. We are like a city. Inside this old factory space, we house staff for the 27 different anti-poverty programs that we run. A few are big programs; many are small. About 475 people work here, and we get about the same number of clients and visitors coming through every day. There’s a lot of human bustle in here. The office cubicles are arranged in blocks like a street grid. There’s a big thoroughfare we call Main Street, and there’s Coffee Alley and an area we call The Park where we have big staff meetings. And…


Q. So, you’re like a city because you’ve arranged your cubicles a certain way? That’s a pretty shallow metaphor isn’t it?

A. Well, if you’d let me finish…We don’t just look like a city; we act like one in some important ways. We intentionally created Opportunity City to try to capture the agglomeration effects that flow from the concentration of resources and functions in cities. Everyday, there are lots of low-income people here. Everyday, there are lots of people in here helping them directly or indirectly. In house, we’ve got people working on solving child care, transportation, housing, food and health care problems for individuals. We’ve got labor market analysts, administrators and support staff, employment recruiters, job trainers and representatives from apprenticeship programs working with individuals and on policy-level changes. There are also policy designers, grant writers, program evaluators and various academic interlopers. They’re all here, everyday. In close proximity. Trouble-shooting problems. Bouncing ideas off each other. Able to shout over the cubicle wall to get help. Coordinated complexity happening in close quarters is not a bad description of what a city is, and it’s what we are doing at Opportunity City.


Q. Agglomeration effects. Coordinated complexity. Fancy talk. Please tell us in plain English what the hell you’re talking about.

A. It’s simple, really. It’s just what I said a second ago: if you can get a lot of people working closely together on a set of related problems, you can be more effective at solving problems, at being productive. Density and proximity make it easier, more likely for people to problem-solve effectively in real-time. That’s the essence of these concepts. They’ve been at the heart of understanding why people and firms locate in cities.

Q. For a non-profit, you seem very well funded indeed. Where does all the money come from?

A. We’ve been blessed with very extravagant donations from a few wealthy benefactors in town. Our policy innovations have attracted grants from national foundations. And, of course, we’ve been fortunate to get funding from the new federal block grant programs for workforce development and affordable housing.

Q. You sound excited. Knowing the history of anti-poverty efforts, aren’t you setting yourself up for disappointment?

A. First, hold on a minute. Anti-poverty efforts often get a bad rap they don’t deserve. Social Security keeps lots of elderly folks out of poverty. If that’s a failure, give me more. The Earned Income Tax Credit has helped millions of low-income working families make work pay enough to afford housing and groceries. That’s a success story in my book, and so is the fact that many low-income folks have gotten good jobs through some of the better job training and placement programs. So, no, I don’t think we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. In fact, this is one of the most exciting times in American history to be involved in the fight against poverty. Thanks to the new national health care program, every American now has affordable health insurance. This is a huge boost to low-income people. And there’s the new Skill Net program. Under this program, every American worker gets financial help to keep their job skills up-to-date and, when a job is lost, gets decent wage insurance payments to bridge over periods of unemployment without having to plunge into poverty to qualify for help. For struggling low-income workers, this new program will help keep them attached to jobs and prevent them from cycling in and out of poverty and low wage work.

Q. You like what the Obama administration has done to help fight poverty. Understood. But what are you doing locally at Opportunity City?

A. What the feds are doing is really important to our efforts. Because federal efforts will help keep many low-income families and workers from falling back into poverty so easily, at the local level we can focus on harder problems like helping people with few skills and little-to-no job experience get jobs and rebuilding distressed neighborhoods. That’s what we’re doing at Opportunity City.

Q. Nice generalities. Any specifics?

A. Sure. We’ve just launched an experimental program called Project Search and Employ. Basically, the program aims to create a group of companies with a strong profit incentive to recruit poor people with few job skills and successfully place them in real jobs with good wages and benefits. It works like this. There’s a big pot of money—all from a very generous private donor—controlled by a team of investors. The investors are a bunch of experts—experts in things like training workers, analyzing businesses, understanding industry sectors and supply chains, poverty policy, mentoring and coaching, and program evaluation. What they do is invest in proposals to create what we call search and employ companies or SECs. The SECs—each using different strategies, but all working within the same set of very high poverty census tracks—go out and find poor people who don’t have much work history, but are able to work, and hire them for a job with the SEC that involves them being trained for a real job. The SEC job is real enough, too. The recruits get paid a decent wage and benefits, and pay taxes and can be fired at the will of the employer. Anyway, if and when the SEC gets the recruit a real job—not with the SEC—then, our investors pay the SEC a big bonus. And if the recruit stays employed long enough, they get an even bigger bonus. If the SECs don’t get people good jobs for long enough, they’ll fail as businesses. Even though a program like this will work best when the labor market improves, we’re excited to get started on it because it not only gives a lot of poor people jobs right away—the SEC training jobs—but it also incentivizes lots of creative thinking about how to turn low-skilled people into stable employees.

Q. Profit from poverty. Isn’t that morally yucky?

A. Don’t try to be cute. The profits come from increasing employment and reducing poverty.


Q. Fair enough. What else are you doing?

A. Running programs is not all we do. We also try to push larger systems—like schools, chambers of commerce and city governments—to do things that help fight poverty. For example, we’re trying to create a fairly dense walkable low-income neighborhood where there are currently lots of boarded-up houses and very few businesses. To do this, is going to require help from everybody. We’ll need good schools. Grocery stores and other businesses willing to look with fresh eyes on the economic prospects in low-income neighborhoods. New zoning ordinances allowing for mixed use. And more.


Q. Now, it’s your turn to hold on a minute. Isn’t “walkability” code for gentrification?

A. It can be, sure. But first you need to understand that walkable neighborhoods can really help make life much easier and more affordable for low-income people. Think of the transportation costs and life-hassles you can avoid if child care, schools, grocery stores, places of employment, government offices, parks and transit stops are located within walking distance. The gentrification concern comes in because more and more of what we used to call yuppies like this stuff too and are willing to pay a premium to live in such places and drive up costs for everybody. But our plan is keep these neighborhoods affordable for the people who already live there. And we’re doing that with a range of programs including generous low income housing tax credits, land trusts, and value-latching which taps into any rise in property values to pay for programs that keep housing affordable. We’ve structured all this so that, over time, property values will be able to return to their real market values but only as long as the neighborhood maintains enough affordable housing capacity, too.

Q. You’re smiling. How is that possible with all the misery, all the failure of the American Dream you see every day?

A. Yes, poverty is terrible. And, yes, it’s heartbreaking to see what it does to people. But as I said before, this is a very promising moment for America. There’s a new sense that we’re all in this together, and a new willingness to work for the common good. For me, in the context of the fight against poverty, it’s especially wonderful to see Americans rediscover the natural strengths of cities, to see cities once more as the engines of growth and opportunity they are.

Interview confabulated, condensed and edited by Dan Lorentz.

*IP is an acronym for Imaginary Press, a wire service providing factually dubious news and feature stories to credulous media outlets worldwide.

--- --- ---

Note: This will be my last post as a regular Where contributor. My experience here has inspired me to continue to blog about city issues, except that now I want to concentrate on a more local project. In mid-April, I hope to launch My Athens, a blog about my new hometown, Athens, Georgia. [Note: This note and the note it’s embedded in are true, unlike most of the fiction that precedes it.]

(Photos--in the order they appear--from Flickr users craigallyn, opendemocracy, Matthew Shelley. The original full-sized color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

LaHood: Not a Disastrous Pick, After All?

I don't know about you, but after Ray LaHood was tapped to serve as Obama's Secretary of Transportation, most of what I read around the urblogosphere was bad-news-bears. Urban policy wonk Ryan Avent questioned the decision over at Grist, as well as his own blog; over at WorldChanging, Alex Steffen wondered aloud wether Obama had used the position as a throwaway to appease Republicans; and transit blog The Overheard Wire took a padded swipe at the new Sec. Interested in getting the opinion of someone in the transit policy arena from LaHood's home state (which, luckily enough, happens to be my own), I checked in with a friend who's on the board of the Chicago-based Active Transportation Alliance, formerly the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation. He pointed me to an editorial piece in the org's latest newsletter, ModeShift, which paints a much sunnier picture of LaHood than I've become accustomed to reading. According to the ModeShift article, LaHood is a strong and vocal proponent of rails-to-trails programs, and has been twice-honored by the League of Illinois Bicyclists for his efforts on biking issues. So his mass transit record is still murky, but it sounds like LaHood's not all bad news. Just a bit of food for thought.

Edit: all that being said, I'm starting to wish that this Nadler fellow would have been given the nod.

Section 8 Everywhere

Mixed-income neighborhoods are part of the urban planning canon and will make any good urbanist’s list of prescriptions for an ailing city.  The potential benefits are overwhelming: better job and school access for the poor, increased diversity of residents and services, reduced crime and class animosity, etc.  Most importantly, they are the exact opposite of “concentration of poverty,” the case against which has been made many, many, times (pdfs). Unfortunately mixed-income neighborhoods have proven difficult to achieve, and the degree to which our cities remain segregated by class is easily visible in the geographic distribution of per capita income of any major city, such as for Los Angeles at right.

Section 8 was supposed to fix this. Not fix poverty or make every block magically diverse, but de-concentrate poverty and create less daunting occurrences.  Not so, enclaves of extreme poverty remain; Section 8 has duplicated many of the problems of traditional public housing.  Why?

Currently through Section 8 (less popularly know as the Housing Choice Voucher Program) the US government subsidizes up to about 70% of the rent of low-income families. Landlords may make their building a project and receive payments through the local public housing authority or accept individual tenants who pay part of their rent with government vouchers.  This is the first problem.

Landlords may accept vouchers, but they also may not; participation has always been voluntary.  This has very effectively curtailed the range of housing options available to poor folk, in some cases leaving them with privately-owned ‘public’ housing as their only choice.  Responding to this issue, New Jersey, New York City, & DC have all enacted laws to prohibit landlords from discriminating based on income source, meaning that they can’t refuse a renter because they will pay with government vouchers. Giving low-income renters the opportunity to live where they choose is certainly a positive step that should be emulated elsewhere, even if the non-discrimination laws prove difficult to enforce.

As problematic as the legal barriers to allowing Section 8 tenants to move out of poor areas are, the social barriers are more intractable.  Moving To Opportunity is a test program to study the results of moving people out of low-income neighborhoods.  It suggests that even when given the option, many do not or cannot take advantage.  As summarized at The American Prospect:

“Many families offered the opportunity to move chose to stay. Others relocated but then returned to their old neighborhoods. When families did move, many youths remained strongly attached to their old neighborhoods. Most participating families who did move ended up in relatively nearby, majority-minority communities that were safer and modestly more prosperous than their old neighborhoods. Unfortunately, many of these receiving neighborhoods…themselves have relatively low-quality, racially segregated schools…children didn't show much academic improvement.”

So: how do you get people to move when your “concentration of poverty” is their lifelong home?  When they have a community of support they clearly value more than school quality?

Money is one answer: Government could provide a stipend or mandate that a landlords provide one to entice Section 8 tenants out of low-income areas.  Zoning is another: restrictions could be placed on the quantity of Section 8 housing available in low-income areas (something that has local political support in some poor areas).  Either way, it seems illegitimately paternalistic to attempt to manipulate low-income folks into deconstructing their communities - it’s based on the assumption that they can’t properly evaluate their housing choices.

Mixed-income neighborhoods remain a venerable goal.  Certainly laws should facilitate their formation rather than hinder.  However, the focus on where cities should stock their poor is misplaced, especially in the context of the choice of actual low-income people.

(Photos from Flickr user The Voice of Eye and Radical Cartography. The original full-sized versions can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Hickenlooper on Biden

I've got my doubts about Barack's veep choice, but this quote from Denver mayor John Hickenlooper gives me hope. Perhaps, as is very, very possible with the contemporary media, Biden's big mouth has overshadowed wise policy. Let's hope that's the case.

At any rate, here's what Hickenlooper had to say yesterday:

"From the point of view of a big-city mayor, I think Barack Obama couldn't have picked a better vice-president. Joe Biden has been at the forefront of a lot of urban policy issues - the governor was just talking about his domestic violence legislation. He has consistently shown that you don't throw money at problems, right? You come up with solutions, and they you measure your investment, you measure your outcomes. He will be very warmly received by the mayors of this country."


(From, Via)

WEEKEND READING: March 22-28, 2008

Sorry for the slow week. Regular posting should resume after this weekend. In the meantime, there's always plenty of weekend reading to go around!

ITEM ONE: First off, a bit of self-promotion. I have a new post up at Next American City projecting some possible outcomes of the rise of online virtual worlds and increased advertising in Western culture. The French Quarter as an export? Perhaps...

ITEM TWO: WorldChanging with a stirring piece on the powerful political act of optimisim.

ITEM THREE: Is your city a "Paris" or a "London"? Read this Economist piece comparing the two euro-glam-capitals and ponder that question for a bit. (Via Pittsblog)

ITEM FOUR: PlannersWeb takes an in-depth look at the role of urban planners in a Chavez-led Venezuela.

ITEM FIVE: Core77 reports on the book containing the radical designs generated by participants in eVolo's '06, '07, and '08 Skyscraper Competition. Flashy stuff. (Photo credit)

ITEM SIX: Speaking of radical architecture, Richard Florida posted news of a massive floating city-cum-cruise ship. This definitely falls under "You gotta see it to believe it."

ITEM SEVEN: Over at Interchange, Barbara Faga looks at the somewhat comical tug-of-war in public perception of which is worse: density or sprawl.

Hasta luego; enjoy your weekend.

Blogedanken: The Wishlist

Strange title, no? To explain: the term "blogedanken" is a portmanteau of "blog" and "gedanken," a German word that translates, roughly, to "thought experiment." Tonight, a blogedanken for your entertainment and mental exercise. After the first part, you'll need to highlight the text to see the next three. Resist the urge to look ahead -- go one at a time, or it won't be any fun.

1.) Spend ten minutes brainstorming every bit of urban designery that would be on your ultimate wishlist for your city. Does your city need a more efficient subway? Better street life? A giant sculpture of Chuck Norris? Go crazy. Get creative. This is the easy part. (Here's a great example featured in Weekend Reading two weeks ago, in case you need inspiration).

2.) Now go back over your list and decide which fifteen things would be your top priorities if you could put together your ideal plan for your city. Think carefully -- what would really make your city a better place to live?|||

3.) Next -- without changing the order of your fifteen priority items -- circle the first, sixth, and eleventh entries on your list. Now try to come up with a way that you could combine all three into one grand, symbiotic piece of urban design and/or policy. Repeat the process for the groupings of items 2-7-12, 3-8-13, 4-9-14, and 5-10-15. Again: Go crazy. Get creative.|||

4.) You should now have five innovative, wildly imaginative urban solutions unique to the challenges that face your city. Post your favorites in the comments section of this thread. Floating sustainable fast food culture villages? Tribal teen centers hung from the bottoms of elevated high-speed train tracks? Tax breaks for city workers who rent their homes and volunteer with local nonprofits? Show us what you've got.|||

Go get your gedanken on.

EDIT: This blogedanken is now officially a contest. You can enter as many or as few of your five results from the exercise as you'd like, but no more than five entries per person, please. Entries should be added as comments to this thread, and only participants who complete all four steps will be eligible to win. Entries will be accepted between now and March 31st, at which point I'll narrow the entries down to the most creative/funky/innovative/entertaining of the bunch (yeah, it's subjective, I know) and open things up to a public vote from April 1-10. The winner will be announced on Friday, April 11, and will promptly receive, via mail, a copy of PA Press' book, Hyperborder.

(Photo from Flickr user Dom Dada. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Weekend Reading Addendum

While cleaning out the email inbox, I stumbled onto some links that I have been meaning to add to Weekend Reading for some time now, and keep forgetting precisely because they're in my email inbox and not saved in my reader. Oh, my poor addled brain, unable to keep track of all these internets. Without further ado...

The website of the Hand Drawn Map Association (Photo credit)

A new blog called Variable Interest

Another from PlannersWeb

The new Monu on "Border Urbanism"

Enjoy, compadres.

The Endless City Q&A

After a tiny bit of prodding, the folks at Phaidon sent over a review copy of the recently released book The Endless City, edited by Ricky Burdett and Deyan Sudjic, and containing essays by the likes of Saskia Sassen, Enrique Peñalosa, and the indefatigable Rem Koolhaas. Where will feature a review of the book soon, but first, another treat from Phaidon; the editors were asked a series of questions. The following is a selection of the highlights from the record of this Q&A.

What are the main issues that you think people should be concerned about when it comes to city growth?
The book has a section titled ‘Issues’ that we hope synthesizes the complexities of urban growth. In it, a number of the contributors outline key issues but approach them from a variety of viewpoints. For example, Richard Sennett argues that ‘over determination’ can kill the vitality and growth of urban centers. Cities need to be dynamic and its physical forms and functions need to be endowed with the capacity to respond to indeterminate, unpredictable forces. Frank Duffy applies a similar idea when explaining the urban office, so ‘adaptability’ is the central issue they both cover. Another issue the book clearly prioritizes is sustainable development. The contributions from Guy Battle and Nicky Gavron, along with the Knoflacher, Rode and Tiwari essay, all detail urban growth strategies that respond to the environment and the challenges of climate change. Another central issue summarized by the three essays by Gerald Frug, Enrique Penalosa and Geetam Tiwari is governance and civic participation – cities need to allow for a multiplicity of voices and actors as well as a variety of experiences but there needs to be an agent or authority that can intelligently negotiate this multiplicity and still get something done. Tiwari explains this with particular reference to the forces dominating the informal sector. Both Anne Power and Sophie Body-Gendrot elaborate on this as well as some of the other pressing sociological concerns that urban designers, policymakers and the general public confront in the act of city making. Of course it goes without saying that quality design is the ingredient that delivers a truly remarkable city and allows individual places to flourish. The essays by architects Rem Koolhaas, Alejandro Zaera-Polo, and Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron all contribute various reflections about how to reconcile a variety of factors and perspectives enmeshed within the city’s physical reality. It should be noted that many of the essays in the Cities section resonate with the broader themes in the Issues section as well. The result is a cross-sectional analysis between the six cities [New York, London, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Mexico City, and Berlin] and the global world with issues finitely referenced to specific urban conditions.

What world cities do you expect to go through the greatest changes in the 21st century?
The fastest growing cities are in Africa and across Asia and its up to the next generation to make sure their development does not repeat the mistakes of cities in the developed world – this means Lagos and Kinshasa, Mumbai, Deli and Dhaka, as well as Shanghai and Jakarta. It is projected that by 2030, over 4 out of every 5 urban dwellers will be in the developing world so this will have huge implications for the global economy. At the same time, mature cities such as London and New York City, Berlin and Mexico City need to ensure that their future growth reconciles their layered history of planning mistakes and prioritizes sustainable transport and inclusive, contained growth.

The book talks about the importance of cities learning from each other. Can you explain that? For example, what can NYC learn from Shanghai? Can small cities learn from big cities?
There are countless examples of cities looking to other cities when deciding how to invest in their future growth and health. Congestion charging in NYC wouldn’t be a viable option had London not demonstrated how it could be done, and Mexico City’s Metrobús is a stunning success modeled on the Transmilenio in Bogota and of course Curitiba. Ideas must be partnered with implementation strategies and learning often is a matter of scale. So yes, small cities can learn from big, and vice versa. The essay by Knoflacher, Rode and Tiwari describes how small cities can serve as incubators for innovation precisely because of their scale. Understanding how cities implement large projects such as the Olympics in London, doing it with the right amount of investment in public space, has a lot to do with acknowledging how the city and individual neighborhoods have developed over time and how open space serves to socially integrate people from disparate backgrounds. The contributions of both Saskia Sassen and Enrique Peñalosa emphasizes this learning, especially in the latter how urban centers in developed countries are recovering from their love affair with the car, delimiting the access of automobiles in favor of public transport. Cities in developing countries could learn a lot from this. Most importantly, in order for ideas to transfer from one city to another, there needs to be a complementary understanding about how policies, decision making and funding align to facilitate implementation. Frug’s essay explains how the power structures of the six cities vary and what impact permutations to each city’s existing systems could have on local and regional planning mechanisms.

What are the key ideas that you want people to take away from reading this book?
The 34 contributors to the book – along with the hundreds of policymakers, politicians, academics, architects, planners, and urbanists involved with the Urban Age project which forms the basis for The Endless City – all believe that cities can offer a better social and economic life for its citizens. Now that half the world’s population live in cities, there is an urgent need to take stock of the new urban condition and find an approach to dealing with it. City sprawl should be contained and there are innovative strategies for creating high density, highly liveable environments. We want to help those charged with running and making cities understand the relationship between the socio-economic and spatial characteristics of cities – and we want the general public to understand how sustainable urban development can actually improve the physical form of their cities and the quality of their lives.

Are you hopeful for the future when it comes to our cities?
Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, offers an incredible explanation for why we should all be hopeful for the future of cities. Cities offer the potential for ‘quality of life equality’, i.e. access to green, open space and social and economic mobility as well as physical mobility. Across the world, people are moving into cities at an alarming rate – and not just mega-cities but smaller cities comprising an overall urbanized region. Most importantly, the twenty-first century will be increasingly focused on reducing both the overall sum and per capita production of carbon emissions, and as emitters of 75 per cent of the world’s pollution, cities are the battleground on which the future and health of our planet will be determined.

Is there any way for ordinary people to make change in their own cities? Do you have any recommendations for someone who wants to get involved?
Ordinary people make change in their city everyday. They do this by opting for public transport instead of a private car, by holding their government officials responsible for the quality of the built environment, and by advocating for equal access to green, open space. Ensuring that there is investment in sustainable forms of transport, and that access to healthcare, education and community services does not depend on how much money you make or the wealth of your locality. Most importantly, if you don’t know what your community is doing locally to advocate sustainable urban development, then join a forum and find out. Participate.

(Thanks, Faye!)

(Photo from Flickr users thequickbrownfoxjumpsoverthelazydog and howzey. The original full-color versions can be viewed by clicking the respective photos.)

WEEKEND READING: February 2-8, 2008

Did you know that it can actually rain slush? Like, the rain is semi-frozen, so as it hits the ground it collects and forms massive fraeking rivers of slush in the middle of streets. It's true. It happened in Chicago this week. It was the worst winter weather I've ever seen, and I'm from Wisconsin. By the way, here's your Weekend Reading. :-)

ITEM ONE: Great article on the recent trend in happiness-focused urban policies.

ITEM TWO: Interchange post by Greg Smithsimon about sustainability and the importance of having plans for change "lying around."

ITEM THREE: Strange Maps covers "America: The Mall" with an enlightening essay.

ITEM FOUR: Just discovered a fanastic new blog called Making Maps. Take a gander at this post on the principles of map design.

ITEM FIVE: Pruned covers some fabulously futuristic designs for a park in Venice. (Photo credit)

ITEM SIX: WebUrbanist's "5 Innovative Industrial Designs for Ecological Living" will have you rethinking the way you interact with everyday objects.

ITEM SEVEN: In the realm of Crazy-But-True, there is apparently a group trying to raise $10 billion to build a dome over Chicago to ward off nasty winter weather. After this week, I almost want to contribute. Best part: they've already raised $233,085.

No more slush rain this weekend, but it's supposed to get down to ten degrees Fahrenheit. Winter here sucks, y'all. Hope your weekend is warmer than mine!

WEEKEND READING: January 5-11, 2008

While you were proposing the tackiest building ever designed, Detroit, one of these articles was having the BEST WEEK EVER!!

ITEM ONE: Some interesting speculative fiction on the politically autonomous future of North American citystates over at All About Cities.

ITEM TWO: AHI's 2008 list 'o predictions, hot off the presses!

ITEM THREE: A funky video from GOOD Magazine that explores the etymology of conflict-prone caital cities around the world.

ITEM FOUR: Built Chicago points to a provacative new book about the drug trade in the Robert Taylor Homes here in Chicago. (Also: Apartment Therapy Chicago on Cabrini Green, and TNAC on the last season of The Wire).

ITEM FIVE: Colorful photogasm of Dharavi's "13 Compound" neighborhood.

ITEM SIX: Baltimore sues Wells Fargo for predatory lending. This is going to be interesting...

ITEM SEVEN: A guide to web tools for eating locally for all of you New Years Resolutionists. (Via Very Spatial)

Adios, compadres. Hope you have the best weekend ever. ;-) Don't forget to sound off on the Conscious Urbanism Game, if you get the chance.

(Photo from Flickr user ChicagoEye. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Conscious Urbanism: The Game?

I'm toying with an idea for a new feature, and I'm hoping for some reader feedback. If you're a regular, an occasional reader, or even a drop-in checking out Where for the first time, I hope you'll weigh in on this concept, as the reader response will determine its future.

I read posts on two blogs recently that have started my brain a-thinkin' about how effective a good game can be. (Monday's post on the X Prize, and the value of competition, served as part of the inspiration as well). The first post, over at Inhabitat, talks about a new board game called Play Rethink, in which players use a spinner and product cards to create a variety of environmentally-friendly design challenge scenarios which they must then address. The intent is to get normal people (non-professionals) thinking about eco-design and issues like local vs. imported materials, sustainability, and adaptive re-use. It does so, rather ingeniously, I think, by making the process fun and entertaining. It's public engagement through play.

Play is a powerful method of communication. When we are playing (on a playground, a sports field, a computer, etc.) our guard is down. We are having fun, and that makes us more receptive to the ideas that we are being exposed to through the game. Thus, it seems like play would be an excellent way to address seemingly intractable urban problems. Make policy and urban design fun, and we might start coming up with some interesting answers to exhausting questions.

Enter inspiration #2: a recent post at Brand Avenue spotlights a 100-day-long game called "Future City," being facilitated by the Hamilton Spectator, a newspaper in the city of Hamilton, in Canada. In the game, the paper poses scenarios in the city's imagined future and asks readers to vote on the outcomes. There's a fun interactive map of the evolved version of the city that Spectator readers are creating, and the whole thing seems to be quite the little success. It's getting Hamiltonites actively thinking about and participating in their city's future, which will (hopefully) translate to these citizens becoming more politically active and aware at the local level.

Where's "Conscious Urbanism" series has, for whatever reason (I suppose I should know, but I can't come up with anything solid), fallen by the wayside over the past several months. I find this unfortunate, since the discussion of active citizenship and innovative neighborhood-based solutions was part of my original inspiration for starting this blog. As stated in the inaugural post, I have always hoped that Where might be able to spark some interesting conversations about urbanism, but I have admittedly had little success in encouraging such activity thus far.

Thus, Conscious Urbanism provides us with a possible jolt of conversational energy. I would very much like to create some sort of game, as a recurring feature at Where, that takes urban problems found in news items or submitted by readers and challenges readers to create, discuss, and debate potential solutions. The idea is, of course, to start something constructive -- and fun. (It is intended to be a game, after all). But I'm not yet sure exactly what form the game should take...there would need to be some framework of rules and instructions -- nothing too limiting, but enough to give the game some direction. And, certainly, there would need to be a clarification of what, exactly, "Conscious Urbanism" really is. (Admittedly, it's been a bit vague in the past). Whatever it is, it's about people working together, socially, to solve urban problems, so it seems logical to re-think the feature in a more participatory way.

So this brings us to a crossroads, and to an invitation. I hope that you'll sound off on this little seed of an idea. If you have an idea for how the game might be structured, or how participation might be encouraged, or even if you just want to voice your interest in participating once the thing gets off and running, I do hope you'll take a moment to contribute. If you think this sounds utterly inane, say that, too. I'm open to suggestions as to why it shouldn't be done. At this point, I'm open to suggestions, period.

Of course, if there is no response, I'll let this one slip quietly by. There's no need to push the idea if there's no interest in participation, as reader involvement would be critical to this feature's success. Of course, if you have nothing to say, by all means, say nothing! :-) I do hope you'll participate, though. We'll see where things go from here...

(Photo from Flickr user colampearson. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Play Rethink: The Eco-Design Game (Inhabitat)

Dreaming Big (Brand Avenue)

The Suburbanization of Walt Disney World

"It was really nice. I loved being able to walk around to everything and not have to worry about traffic or parking. We could just leave the hotel and catch a bus and ride it right to the parks, and then if we wanted to go somewhere else we could take the monorail. Everything was just really easy to get to."

That is an (imperfectly reproduced) comment from my mom during a conversation we had about y family's recent trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. I've been home for the holidays, and it was the first chance I'd had to really hear about their trip. It's certainly not the first time they've been to WDW -- in fact, it was their fourth (I was along for the first two trips, for the record). But this time -- and I have a feeling that blogging over this past year had something to do with this -- I found renewed interest in hearing about the same parks I'd visited and heard described so many times before.

What struck me, as you may have already guessed, was how very...urban WDW sounded in her description. For those who aren't familiar with the resort, the Disney corporation's largest theme park is located on a sprawling megalot southwest of Orlando. Four theme parks, three water parks, a huge shopping center, golf courses, a sports complex, and an obscene number of hotels are sprinkled around this huge land reserve, with everything of interest to tourists being conveniently connected to public transit. Well, "public" for paying resort guests.

WDW is often considered a poster child for the kind of dull, controlled, paternalistic environments that urbanists rail against. The word "Disneyfication" refers to a renovation which scrubs up and de-authenticates an existing place. Disney is soulless, and its theme parks are the most blatant manifestation of this. There is a megalomaniacal insistence -- nearly palpable when you're visiting the parks -- that your every move is being anticipated and manipulated.

Still, there are some interesting parallels between these theme parks and the urban environment. The walkability and transit connectivity certainly mimic the benefits of urban areas. There is also a diversity of experience that is often lacking in suburban places. As mentioned above, Disney is extremely careful to make sure that you only see and hear what they want you to see and hear in their parks, but that is not to say that there aren't variables in what you decide to do and see. In a way, this is true of all cities. Cities offer a wider range of experiences than a theme park, but there is always a limit on what you can see and do, whether they are legal, physical or otherwise. You can't climb a mountain in Chicago; the city is as flat as paper.

It was interesting, then, to hear that Disney had implemented yet another constraint on guests' experiential variety and the experience of some very loyal guests -- the 'rents, again -- had been less satisfied with their overall experience. While they still had a great time, the resort's new pre-paid meal plan system was apparently taking some of the excitement out of this already super-controlled environment. Mom again:

"With the meal plan, you have to reserve your spot in a lot of restaurants, especially for dinner. We saw a lot of people getting turned away from restaurants because they were booked up months in advance. It used to be fun, when we'd go, to be able to just walk around and enjoy the park and, if we found a place that looked interesting, just eat there. Now, you have to book your meals 180 days in advance, which isn't as exciting."

In an effort to make things easier for guests, Disney has actually made their parks a little less pleasant. Especially with a theme park, controlling a guest's experience of a place -- through as many of the five senses as possible -- is important to creating a memorable themed experience. But if there is too much effort on the part of the party controlling that experience, it can actually be detrimental to the guest's overall impression. It's a delicate balance that urban designers and planners could likely learn from. For certainly, the same thing must apply to cities. So how much of a city should be controlled (through zoning, height restrictions, traffic controls, and other legislation) and how much should be left up to residents to shape? Cities are a much more participatory place than theme parks; this only makes this question of balance more important.

US Election 08: The Mayors Speak

The Nation and the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy recently did a video-survey of big-city mayors across the US to find out what they thought about the current state of the US and its cities, the current presidential administration, and the 2008 that's now in full swing here in the States. Of the ten mayors surveyed, all have interesting things to say, but there are two issues that get an especially high level of attention. They are:

1) Urban crime problems -- or, more specifically in many cases, gun control and illegal drugs.
2) The need for a presidential administration that takes cities seriously, as opposed to the standoffish relationship established by the Bush White House, which the mayors almost universally decry, outright.

What this seems to suggest is that day-to-day life for most Americans has little or nothing to do with the "hot-button" issues that presidential candidates are so concerned about. Abortion, gay marriage, and the Iraq war, while all important in their own ways, are by no means the issues that have the greatest impact on this country, yet they receive a greatly disproportionate amount of attention in the media because they are easily polarized issues, and thus much easier to sell. Meanwhile, people struggle every day with crime, education, drugs, and economic issues that go largely unaddressed.

At least, that's what the people in charge at the local level are saying. And how many people do you know that live their lives internationally, or even nationally for that matter?

Many of the mayors interviewed in the series speak fondly of the work they are doing as a part of the US Conference of Mayors, a group that has only increased in importance as the Bush Administration as proven itself to be utterly incapable of remembering that there is an actual country full of people that they are trying to "defend" with their wars overseas. What is especially interesting is how several mayors commented explain the stark difference between the ways that the Clinton and Bush administrations dealt with the USCoM: Clinton met with each mayor individually and attended group sessions, while GW has dropped in on a handful of meetings.

The videos each run about 4-5 minutes, and the series is worth an hour of your time. If you only have a few minutes, try one of the following, which I found to be highlights:

"Frankly, the Federal government has become largely irrelevant to most of the significant work that we're doing ... My city is stronger because we have different values than the Washington values that have been pushed onto us." -- Minneapolis, MN Mayor T. R. Rybak

"You just do not get a sense that cities are a priority in the current administration, and perhaps not a priority with many of the candidates running ... [With] the lack of investment in our own country and the lack of investment in our cities, in essence we are losing the hearts and minds of the American people." -- Rochester, NY Mayor Bob Duffy

"We shouldn't take for granted that the infrastructure that we built 100 or 75 years ago can withstand the climate shifts, or the economic shifts, can withstand the pressure on that infrastructure forever ... Clearly, we need an urban agenda. We need an agenda the speaks to the issues of where people are congregating for most of their lives, working, living, and learning." -- Atlanta, GA Mayor Shirley Franklin

"Mayors have to be pragmatic, it's part of the job ... Ultimately, I think that's what any presidential agenda has to get to, is the point where we start solving problems instead of just throwing money at them."
-- Denver, CO Mayor John Hickenlooper




Links:
Campaign in the City: Mayors on the Issues (The Nation)

Drum Major Institute for Public Policy

US Conference of Mayors

Speculative Urban Blogging

I came across two great new blogs this week that do what you might refer to as "speculative urban blogging" in two very different (if equally innovative) ways. So consider tonight's post sort of an in-depth lead-in to Weekend Reading, if you will.

Audacious Ideas takes a look at how things are going in Baltimore and makes some rather audacious suggestions as to how these problems might be addressed more effectively. Here's the catch: the entries are written by Baltimore professionals who work in fields that deal directly with the problems that they are writing about. Audacious Ideas takes big questions and provides answers sized to match. And even with only five posts (not including the introduction), AI has provided audacious[ly pragmatic, in most cases] suggestions for policy reform in the areas of public health, the city budget, childrens' safety, drug treatment, and education.

Even better, the audacity is apparently just what the doctor ordered, so to speak. Every topic has spurred a discussion at least a dozen posts long. Baltimoreans are taking inspiration from this new public forum, and from everything that I've read the readers are taking the discussions seriously -- a rare occurence on the internet. It certainly helps that these discussions are being started and led by community leaders with experience and wisdom. Online conversations almost always benefit from having a curating presence, and as this blog continues to build a body of posts and public discourse, it stands a better chance of becoming a real engine for change in Baltimore. Speculating on the future of the city opens up possibilities and puts some 2.0 juice into public policy.

The Blurgh looks at Pittsburgh's future from an entirely different angle: the writers are already living in it. Written in an imagined 2027, The Blurgh is a rather audacious blog, itself. "Frank" and "Gretchen" are two twentysomethings, a student and a writer, making their way in the now-resurgent Steel City. Written as a simple journal-style blog, The Blurgh is coy. The bloggers mention massive changes in the city's physical and economic environments -- Pittsburgh's status as a hub of sustainable technology, the city's impressive literary scene, an über-extensive mass transit system -- in passing, stopping only occasionally to do a sort of "gee, whiz" look back at the past (aka our present) and comment on how glad they are to be living in the "new" Pittsburgh (aka the one in 2027).

It's the realism that is so clever. If this very blog were being written in 2007, it would be wholly unremarkable, another drop in the massive bucket of naval-gazing public journaling that has earned the field blogging its currently somewhat uneven reputation. Well, okay...it is actually being written in 2007, but you get what I mean. The writer(s) of The Blurgh seem to know exactly what they're doing and, while it's too early to tell, they could turn this blog into a very important forum for the discussion of Pittsburgh's future, and how the city got/could get there. At the very least, it will be interesting to see how The Blurgh -- and its community of readers -- evolves.

So much of urblogging is focused on keeping tabs on what's going on right now in a neighborhood or a city. The local everyday politics of potholes, homelessness, new construction, and Starbucks are important to local discourse, and this is not a knock against of-the-moment urblogs. But it certainly wouldn't hurt, I don't think, if bloggers in a few more cities took on the challenge of trying to imagine a better and brighter future for the places they live. The hyperlocal movement is very much tied to the immediate present, and sometimes this means that urbloggers can't see the forest for the trees. A better future for our cities is something worth speculating about, and blogging provides those interested with the perfect medium to address rapidly-changing problems. As Audacious Ideas and The Blurgh show us, there are many different ways to use this technology to speculate on a brighter urban future.

(Photo from Flickr user joey kennedy. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Audacious Ideas (via CEOs for Cities)

The Blurgh (via The Burgh Diaspora)