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THE ECOPOLITAN
JUST THE FACTS WE HAVE THE SAME RAIL MILEAGE AS IN 1881 AND TRAINS ARE SLOWER THAN THEY WERE 60 YEARS AGO
FEBRUARY 2010
CHECK OUT A TOOL AT THE LIBRARY
FLORIDA AMENDMENT WOULD GIVE VOTERS SAY IN DEVELOPMENT
MORE EVIDENCE THAT RED LIGHT CAMERAS DON'T WORK
JANUARY 2010
STUDY FINDS RED LIGHT CAMERAS CAUSE ACCIDENTS
MAJOR LONDON INTERSECTION ADOPTS SCRAMBLE APPROACH
VANCOUVER OLYMPICS ALREADY HAVE A LOSER; THE HOMELESS
BUILDING A NEW ORLEANS HOUSE THAT FLOATS
DECEMBER 2009
RECOVERED HISTORY: SPITE HOUSES NOVEMBER 2009
NATION'S CAPITAL TO PUSH HUNDREDS OF HOMELESS OUT OF SHELTERS
DAN BROWN CREATES A MYSTICAL CITY THAT DOESN'T EXIST
URBAN PANHANDLING LAWS HURTING NON PROFIT FUND RAISING
HOW SACRAMENTO TREATS THE HOMELESS
SEPTEMBER 2009
BOOK SHELF: EDUCATION OF AN URBAN FARMER
NYC REQUIRES BIKE SPACE IN COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS
THE RISE OF THE DIGITAL NOMAD
DIGITALNOMAD SITE
AUGUST 2009
BOARDING HOUSES RETURNS TO SEATTLE
LOS ANGELES RANKED 'MEANEST CITY' FOR HOMELESS
JULY 2009
WASHINGTON DC KILLING ITS EXCELLENT CAB SYSTEM
GUESS WHAT THIS BUILDING IS USED FOR KATRINA VICTIMS TO BE HOMELESS AGAIN
BLOOMBERG TO NYC HOMELESS: FIND SHELTER OR LOSE YOUR SHELTER
ATLANTA DESTROYING ALL PUBLIC HOUSING
JUNE 2009
THE MYTH OF URBAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
RECOVERED HISTORY: PUBLIC HOUSING
A HOMELESS MAN TELLS WHAT HE DOESN'T LIKE ABOUT SHELTERS
THE DANGERS OF PRIVATIZING CITY PROGRAMS
WHAT RAILS AND ROADS TELL US ABOUT CLASS & POWER
GALLERY: STREETS FOR NYC PEOPLE MAY 2009
CITY GOVERNMENTS SQUEEZING CITIZENS WITH NEW FEES
BASEMENT APARTMENTS IN THE SKY
HIGH SPEED, HIGH COST, HIGH INCOME RAIL
APRIL 2009
ANTARCTIC ICE SHEET MELTING WOULD SWAMP DC, NYC, LA
MARCH 2009
7 MINUTE MOVIE OF BARACELONA IN 1908
SHOT FROM THE FRONT OF A STREETCARGALLERY: DETROIT'S DECLINE FEBRUARY 2009
WHY PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION IS BETTER THAN BUILDING MORE ROADS
LIGHT RAIL VS. BUS RAPID TRANSIT
JANUARY 2009
VOTERS HAVE APPROVED $74 BILLION IN NEW PUBLIC TRANSIT THIS YEAR
LIGHT RAIL VS. BUS RAPID TRANSIT
Baltimore Business Journal - Enhanced buses are a better option than light-rail cars along the proposed Purple Line in Maryland, according to a study from the World Resources Institute. The D.C.-based institute says that buses would be cheaper and combat global warming better than a light-rail system. . .
Light-rail transit features electric streetcars on rails and bus rapid transit has high-capacity express buses with designated lanes and multiple doorways.
The analysis compares both choices in the "medium investment" range, and says bus rapid transit would cut carbon dioxide emissions by almost 9,000 metric tons per year -- the same as taking about 1,600 cars off the road. MTA estimates the bus option would cost $580 million in capital investment and $17 million in yearly operational costs.
An equivalent light rail system would cost more than double, requiring $1.2 billion in capital and $25 million for annual upkeep. . .
Committee for Transit - A pro-bus think tank has failed to put a dent in the Maryland Transit Administration's analysis of the light rail option for the Purple Line. The World Research Institute's review of the air pollution section of the Purple Line reported that light rail performs slightly better than the state agency reported. The MTA compared light rail to so-called bus rapid transit for six types of air pollution. For five out of the six, light rail performed better. This finding is consistent with an independent analysis of light rail and [bus rapid transit] air emissions by Christopher Puchalsky of the University of Pennsylvania. The WRI chose to look at the one pollutant out of the six for which buses outperformed rail, CO2.
Richard Layman, Urban Places & Spaces - The thing you have to remember is that WRI is an active proponent of BRT as a transportation solution overseas, and they work on many projects there.
There is no question that BRT works great overseas, where far more people don't own cars compared to the U.S., and where people are willing to endure crush loads double what people are willing to endure in North America. In other words, they fit about 160 people on a 60 foot bus. . .
This fails to take into account three realities: (1) most people in the U.S., especially in the suburbs, have cars, access to cars, or could buy them; (2) to get people with the option of automobility to use transit you have to provide a high quality alternative; (3) research has proven time and time again that choice riders will ride fixed rail and except in rare instances, they won't ride bus.
MASSIVE DISCRIMINATION COLORS KATRINA RECOVERY
WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE SUBURBS?
Jonah Lehrer, Boston Globe - Scientists have begun to examine how the city affects the brain, and the results are chastening. Just being in an urban environment, they have found, impairs our basic mental processes. After spending a few minutes on a crowded city street, the brain is less able to hold things in memory, and suffers from reduced self-control. While it's long been recognized that city life is exhausting -- that's why Picasso left Paris -- this new research suggests that cities actually dull our thinking, sometimes dramatically so. . .
One of the main forces at work is a stark lack of nature, which is surprisingly beneficial for the brain. Studies have demonstrated, for instance, that hospital patients recover more quickly when they can see trees from their windows, and that women living in public housing are better able to focus when their apartment overlooks a grassy courtyard. Even these fleeting glimpses of nature improve brain performance, it seems, because they provide a mental break from the urban roil. . .
A city is so overstuffed with stimuli that we need to constantly redirect our attention so that we aren't distracted by irrelevant things, like a flashing neon sign or the cell phone conversation of a nearby passenger on the bus. This sort of controlled perception -- we are telling the mind what to pay attention to -- takes energy and effort. The mind is like a powerful supercomputer, but the act of paying attention consumes much of its processing . . .
Imagine a walk around Walden Pond, in Concord. The woods surrounding the pond are filled with pitch pine and hickory trees. Chickadees and red-tailed hawks nest in the branches; squirrels and rabbits skirmish in the berry bushes. Natural settings are full of objects that automatically capture our attention, yet without triggering a negative emotional response -- unlike, say, a backfiring car. The mental machinery that directs attention can relax deeply, replenishing itself. . .
The density of city life doesn't just make it harder to focus: It also interferes with our self-control. In that stroll down Newbury, the brain is also assaulted with temptations -- caramel lattes, iPods, discounted cashmere sweaters, and high-heeled shoes. Resisting these temptations requires us to flex the prefrontal cortex, a nub of brain just behind the eyes. Unfortunately, this is the same brain area that's responsible for directed attention, which means that it's already been depleted from walking around the city. As a result, it's less able to exert self-control, which means we're more likely to splurge on the latte and those shoes we don't really need. While the human brain possesses incredible computational powers, it's surprisingly easy to short-circuit: all it takes is a hectic city street. . .
Given the myriad mental problems that are exacerbated by city life, from an inability to pay attention to a lack of self-control, the question remains: Why do cities continue to grow? And why, even in the electronic age, do they endure as wellsprings of intellectual life?
Recent research by scientists at the Santa Fe Institute used a set of complex mathematical algorithms to demonstrate that the very same urban features that trigger lapses in attention and memory -- the crowded streets, the crushing density of people -- also correlate with measures of innovation, as strangers interact with one another in unpredictable ways. It is the "concentration of social interactions" that is largely responsible for urban creativity, according to the scientists. The density of 18th-century London may have triggered outbreaks of disease, but it also led to intellectual breakthroughs, just as the density of Cambridge -- one of the densest cities in America -- contributes to its success as a creative center. One corollary of this research is that less dense urban areas, like Phoenix, may, over time, generate less innovation.
The key, then, is to find ways to mitigate the psychological damage of the metropolis while still preserving its unique benefits. . .
NOVEMBER 2008
DIAGONAL CROSSWALKS RETURN TO LOS ANGELES OCTOBER 2008
HOW TO REDUCE VEHICLE FUEL CONSUMPTION 75%
WITH CURRENT TECHNOLOGYMORE CYCLISTS MEAN FEWER ACCIDENTS
NEW ORLEANS THREE YEARS LATER: THE GRIM NUMBERS
SEPTEMBER 2008
THE NOT ALL THAT SMART GROWTH MOVEMENT
Sam Smith, Progressive Review - A movement to reduce the number of parking spaces in urban areas has attracted an odd coalition of developers and environmentalists. DC, one of the most developer abused cities in the country, is currently considering such a move. But, so far as one can see, developers are the only ones who will truly benefit from it, reducing their apartment/rental costs by $20-50k a unit from what it would be if they were required to provide parking for their clients.
To some environmentalists it has a nice anti-car ring to it, but on closer look a number of issues come up:
For example, if you don't want people to use their cars, give them less need to do so. I'm lucky to live in one of the best urban 'hoods you'll find - DC's Capitol Hill - one that owes a part of its charm and utility to the fact that much of it was built before automobiles yet provides - thanks to a lack of high rises and some of the biggest and best alleys you'll find - plenty of parking spaces for residences. It is one of the most dense parts of the city, achieved not with modern big boxes, but with attractive row dwellings, many with basement apartments. But that doesn't mean those on the Hill are excessively car dependent. In fact, thanks to the convenience and number of neighborhood commercial services available, it encourages walking in a big way. I could go to the gas station, hardware store, auto repair shop, UPS, Kinko's, Radio Shack, post office, fire and police station, public library, medical center and more than a dozen eating spots and never be more than ten blocks from my house. In addition, we have two convenience stores and two laundries within a three blocks walk.
This is in no small part thanks to places that were grandfathered into modern zoning - one of the major reasons we now use our cars so much. All over urban America are communities where it would be against the zoning law to emulate Capitol Hill. Little attention is paid to this issue by planners or environmentalists but it is far more important than reducing the number of parking spaces.
Further, people on Capitol Hill use their cars far, far less than the average person in the metropolitan area, yet it is precisely the sort of neighborhood the developers would like to densify, preferably without having to provide parking spaces for the their customers.
And who pays the price of this? The person buying or renting the apartment or condo adds it into the calculations when they move there in the first place. But the neighbors aren't consulted at all. They just find themselves with fewer places to park. Another neat developer trick.
These are the same folks who convinced the Washington area to build a subway that did far more for scattered suburban development than it did for real urban transportation. Meanwhile the bus system - which far more heavily serves poorer residents - is being short changed and the same government that claims to want people to leave their cars at home has also changed the taxi fare system in such a way as to drive many drivers out of the business.
Developers are also pushing for an end to the height limit that helps to give Washington its special character and for more high rise apartment cellblocks in the name of "smart growth."
Environmentalists would be wise to distance themselves from such cons, remembering that communities are ecologies, too. If, as DC has done, you close about a score of public schools (some undoubtedly to be sold to developers), you are hurting the community ecology. When you stuff a public library into a high rise as if it were just another Starbucks, you are hurting the community ecology. And when you dump cold, isolating high rises into an urban village you are harming that village's ecology. But few ever talk about things like that.
Here are a few far better ways for environmentalists to spend their time in our cities:
- Increase the amount of commercial services available within walking distance. This may mean some zoning changes, but it can still be kept attractive and pleasant through rules on signage etc.
- Oppose mass transit plans that are really development plans in drag. This was the great failing of the Washington Metro and there are lots of similar proposals around today. Favor truly urban transit plans that encourage people to stay with a reasonable area.
- Bring back the two or three story apartments over shops and offices that used to be common in America.
- Provide neighborhood business services - including copying facilities, desk space and teleconferencing - to help encourage telecommuting.
- Encourage large businesses to decentralize within an urban area.
- Follow the motto of Henry Thoreau who once said, "I have traveled widely. . . in Concord."
SECTION 8 HOUSING COMES TO THE SUBURBS
JAMES KUNSTLER ON THE END OF SUBURBIA
AUGUST 2008
THE END OF WHITE FLIGHT. . . AND ITS HIDDEN COST
US LAGS IN WORLDWIDE BICYCLING BOOM
Blaine Harden, Washington Post - The number of cyclists has doubled in a decade in cities as disparate as Berlin and Bogota. Global bicycle production has increased for six consecutive years, according to a report by the Earth Policy Institute. . .
Yet when it comes to using a bike for everyday transportation, the boom appears to have bypassed many countries. While Northern Europe and Japan have figured out how to make bicycle commuting a safe, cheap alternative to driving, the United States, Canada, Australia and Britain have not. And the world's two most populous nations, China and India, are discarding bicycles in favor of cars. A rising middle class in both countries views cycling as an unhappy reminder of the recent past, when nearly everyone was poor. . .
Commuters in Northern Europe have been lured out of their cars by bike lanes, secure bike parking and easy access to mass transportation. At the same time, steep automobile taxes, congestion-zone fees and go-slow rules have made inner-city driving a costly pain in the neck. In the Netherlands, where such carrot-and-stick policies have been in place for decades, 27 percent of all trips are by bike. . .
Although millions of Americans recreate on bikes, they ride them for just 0.4 percent of their trips to work, according to the U.S. Census.
Germans are 10 times more likely than Americans to ride a bike and three times less likely to get hurt while doing so. On any given workday, more commuters park their bikes at train and subway stations in Tokyo (704,000) than cycle to work in the entire United States (535,000), according to the Tokyo government and the U.S. Census.
Bill Quiqley, Truthout - Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast three years ago this week. The president promised to do whatever it took to rebuild. . . This is what New Orleans looks like today.
0: Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10 billion federal post- Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block Grant - compared to 116,708 homeowners.
0: Number of apartments currently being built to replace the 963 public housing apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the St. Bernard Housing Development.
0: Amount of data available to evaluate performance of publicly financed, privately run charter schools in New Orleans in 2005-2006 and 2006-2007 school years.
0.8: Percentage of rental homes that were supposed to be repaired and occupied by August 2008 which were actually completed and occupied - a total of 82 finished out of 10,000 projected.
4: Number of the 13 City of New Orleans Planning Districts that are at the same risk of flooding as they were before Katrina.
10: Number of apartments being rehabbed so far to replace the 896 apartments formerly occupied and now demolished at the Lafitte Housing Development.
11: Percent of families who have returned to live in Lower Ninth Ward.
20-25: Years that experts estimate it will take to rebuild the City of New Orleans at current pace.
32: Percent of the city's neighborhoods that have less than half as many households as before Katrina.
36: Percent fewer tons of cargo that move through Port of New Orleans since Katrina.
38: Percent fewer hospital beds in New Orleans since Katrina.
41: Number of publicly funded, privately run public charter schools in New Orleans out of total of 79 public schools in the city.
43: Percentage of child care available in New Orleans compared to before Katrina.
46: Percentage increase in rents in New Orleans since Katrina.
56: Percentage fewer inpatient psychiatric beds compared to before Katrina.
80: Percentage fewer public transportation buses now than pre-Katrina.
81: Percentage of homeowners in New Orleans who received insufficient funds to cover the complete costs to repair their homes.
6,982: Number of families still living in FEMA trailers in metro New Orleans area.
8,000: Fewer publicly assisted rental apartments planned for New Orleans by federal government.
10,000: Houses demolished in New Orleans since Katrina.
12,000: Number of homeless in New Orleans even after camps of people living under the bridges have been resettled - double the pre-Katrina number.
14,000: Number of displaced families in New Orleans area whose hurricane rental assistance expires in March 2009.
32,000: Number of children who have not returned to public school in New Orleans, leaving the public school population less than half what it was pre-Katrina.
39,000: Number of Louisiana homeowners who have applied for federal assistance in repair and rebuilding who still have not received any money.
46,000: Fewer African-American voters in New Orleans in 2007 gubernatorial election than in 2003 gubernatorial election.
71,657: Vacant, ruined, unoccupied houses in New Orleans today.
132,000: Fewer people in New Orleans than before Katrina, according to the City of New Orleans current population estimate of 321,000 in New Orleans.
1.9 billion: FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to metro New Orleans for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.
2.6 billion: FEMA dollars scheduled to be available to State of Louisiana for Katrina damages that have not yet been delivered.
GREAT MOMENTS IN CHICAGO POLITICS
From a great five part series by the Chicago Tribune
www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/chi-bubblycreek-zoning,0,6832274.story chicagotribune.com
Chicago Tribune - Friends of Mayor Richard Daley made out handsomely when land they owned was rezoned in the 11th Ward, helping them sell the property for about $2.4 million more than they paid for it. A critic of the Daley administration didn't do so well, however. He couldn't get a zoning change, and the value of his property diminished by about $4 million, according to court papers.
Both decisions were made by a Daley ally -- James Balcer, the 11th Ward alderman who calls the shots on zoning in his South Side ward.
Zoning is one of the last bastions of power left for Chicago aldermen, who have been marginalized under Daley's control. The Tribune has shown that many of Chicago's 50 aldermen rely on campaign contributions from developers whose projects, in turn, depend on zoning changes.
In the 11th Ward, the ancestral home and power base of the Daley clan, Balcer enjoys so much support from the Daleys that he is the only alderman who doesn't have to raise campaign funds. . .
The Archer Avenue deal began in March 2002, when Richard Ferro, a political supporter of Daley, bought the property for $325,000. He and his business partner, Thomas DiPiazza, also a Daley contributor, later applied to City Hall to rezone the land for town homes.
DiPiazza and Ferro hired Jack George of Daley & George, the law firm of the mayor's brother Michael. In the last five years, Daley & George has handled 60 rezoning applications -- half of all the applications in the ward that weren't filed by Balcer himself, city records show.. . .
Like other zoning changes blessed by aldermen, the request sailed through the City Council.
Landowners who don't have an alderman's support rarely bother to seek a zoning change from the city, knowing it has no chance of being approved.
After Ferro and DiPiazza got their zoning change, they did not develop the land. They sold it.
But before they did, two well-known names were added to the deed as owners on June 18, 2004. One was Timothy Degnan, a political adviser to the mayor. The other was Fred Barbara, a friend of Daley's and a former city waste hauler.
Less than a week later, the land was sold for $2.7 million to another developer who built the town homes.
That sale price was about $2.4 million more than what the Ferro group had originally paid for the land. Before the property was sold, however, the group demolished an old building and cleaned up contaminated soil. That work would likely cost about $300,000, according to public records and estimates from three environmental consultants contacted by the Tribune.
Michael Kralovec, a lawyer for DiPiazza and Ferro, said the group had additional costs and the profit was less than the $2 million suggested by the Tribune's estimates. He did not respond to a request to provide the bills.
Degnan declined to comment for this article, and Barbara could not be reached.
www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-code-astroturfjan28,0,1829330.story chicagotribune.com
Chicago Tribune - An unprecedented Tribune investigation, including an analysis of 5,700 zoning changes over the last 10 years, found city neighborhoods being remade by a development boom greased by millions of dollars in political donations to aldermen.
As neighborhoods are transformed, advisory groups frequently offer no more than the illusion of community input. But the political cover they provide for aldermen is very real.
Even Ald. William J.P. Banks (36th), the longtime chairman of the City Council's Zoning Committee, doubts that recommendations from committees created by aldermen represent true community sentiment. Banks estimates that about half of the city's 50 aldermen appoint their own advisory panels.
"Any alderman can create a committee and make them do what you want them to do, or the applicants [for zoning changes] can stack the committee," Banks said.
In zoning matters, the City Council's unwritten rule is that aldermen retain ultimate say over what gets built in their wards.
Developers seeking valuable zoning changes that allow them to build bigger and taller projects often donate to the campaigns of aldermen. The city's ethics ordinance limits the size of campaign donations to aldermen from people seeking zoning changes, but the provision doesn't prevent aldermen from receiving additional donations from companies with ties to those same applicants.
ECO HOUSING FOR OUR CITIES
As we have noted, developers are busy conning environmentalists and others into supporting more urban high rises in the name of "smart growth." In Washington, DC, they have even started agitating for an end to the capital's historic height limitation which has helped provide its appealing cityscape. But there are far more human, community-oriented and attractive solutions, starting with the accessory apartment:
Sam Smith, Utne Reader, 2000 - Not everyone who leaves the city wants to. In a large number of cases, the cost and availability of housing provides the impetus. Among the factors that have raised the cost and lowered the availability has been gentrification. The gentrifiers not only upscaled the housing stock, they have reduced it, since they require more space per-capita in which to live than did former residents.
One of the simplest, cheapest and quickest ways to counteract this trend is to permit accessory apartments (sometimes called granny flats) in single-family zones. Many of these apartments exist illegally -- there are an estimated 40,000 in LA alone -- supporting my theory that one of the best places to look for good ideas is in the underground economy. If normally law-abiding people insist on doing something against the rules, there's a good chance that the people know something the law doesn't.
The advantages of such apartments include lowering the effective cost of housing for the homeowner, increasing the supply of housing, providing a social and economic mix within neighborhoods, allowing voluntary individual care to replace some of the need for social services (e.g. the young apartment dweller helping the aged landlord upstairs), providing neighborhood-based economic opportunity and increasing the number of eyes on the street.
Reviving the practice of taking in boarders could also greatly improve the availability of housing. The boarder tradition played a major role in the growth of the American city, proving newcomers with an inexpensive place to stay and adding a source of income to those who had lived in the city long enough to own a house.
A more radical approach is cohousing. Cohousing involves individual homes clustered around a large common house with such facilities as a dining room, children's playroom, workshops and laundries. The houses typically have their own kitchen and are otherwise minimally self-sufficient but with the emphasis on communal facilities. Each cohousing plan is worked out with intense participation by future occupants. There is no single plan for these projects; they are designed for specific and changing needs and hospitable to spontaneity., The cohousing approach has been used for condominiums, cooperatives and non-profit rental housing.
There are other things to do. We could encourage the construction of more two and three family homes that were once a staple of urban America. We could build "grow houses" such as the 575-square foot designs of New Haven architect Melanie Taylor that are being built for as little as $30,000 in the southeastern US. Even more novel are the modular homes designed to grow or deconstruct over time as required by the occupants' changing lifestyle. The design of the Center for Maximum Building Tecnologies in Austin, Tex., allows for modules to be detached and moved to another house when the current owner no longer needs them.
NY Times - Cincinnati officials are assembling financing for a $132 million system that would connect the city's riverfront stadiums, downtown business district and Uptown neighborhoods, which include six hospitals and the University of Cincinnati, in a six- to eight-mile loop. Depending on the final financing package, fares may be free, 50 cents or $1. The city plans to pay for the system with existing tax revenue and $30 million in private investment. . .
At least 40 other cities are exploring streetcar plans to spur economic development, ease traffic congestion and draw young professionals and empty-nest baby boomers back from the suburbs, according to the Community Streetcar Coalition, which includes city officials, transit authorities and engineers who advocate streetcar construction.
More than a dozen have existing lines, including New Orleans, which is restoring a system devastated by Hurricane Katrina. And Denver, Houston, Salt Lake City and Charlotte, N.C., have introduced or are planning to introduce streetcars.
"They serve to coalesce a neighborhood," said Jim Graebner, chairman of the American Public Transportation Association's streetcar and vintage trolley committee. "That's very evident in places like San Francisco, which never got rid of its streetcar system."
Modern streetcars, like those Cincinnati plans to use, cost about $3 million each, run on an overhead electrical wire and carry up to 130 passengers per car on rails that are flush with the pavement. . .
Streetcar advocates point to Portland, Ore., which built the first major modern streetcar system in the United States, in 2001, and has since added new lines interlaced with a growing light rail system. Since Portland announced plans for the system, more than 10,000 residential units have been built and $3.5 billion has been invested in property within two blocks of the line, according to Portland Streetcar Inc., which operates the system. . .
"In years gone by, people would move to cities to get a job," Cincinnati's city manager, Milton Dohoney, said. "Today, young, educated workers move to cities with a sense of place. And if businesses see us laying rail down on a street, they'll know that's a permanent route that will have people passing by seven days a week."
After looking into streetcar systems in Seattle, Tacoma, Wash., and Charlotte, Mr. Dohoney became convinced that they spur growth. "Cincinnati has to compete with other cities for investment," he said. "We have to compete for talent and for place of national prominence."
A hundred miles north, Mayor Michael Coleman of Columbus, Ohio, has come to the same conclusion and is pushing to build a $103 million streetcar network along the city's High Street connecting Ohio State University with the downtown business district. The loop would be paid for through a 4 percent surcharge on concert tickets, sporting events and downtown parking and a $12.5 million contribution from Ohio State.
THE NEWS BEFORE IT HAPPENS: A 1972 LOOK AT STREET CARS
Sam Smith, DC Gazette, March 1972 - The end of January marked the tenth anniversary of the last streetcar run in the District. Curiously, only Jack Eisen of the Post, the local freeway lobby's favorite journalist, bothered to note the event. The City Council might have commemorated the occasion were it not engrossed in hearings on how to get DC Transit's O. Roy Chalk to remove an estimated 86 miles of streetcar track remaining in the city. Mayor Walter Washington might have joined also, but he was too busy trying to get congressional approval of a bond guarantee for the Metro subway system.
While generally sympathetic to the streetcar as a historical phenomenon, Eisen offered this ex cathedra assurance: "Streetcars as we knew them will never again run in Washington." Why not? Certainly logic does not rule out their return. Streetcars are efficient. Trolleys operating on surface streets can carry nearly ten times as many people per hour as automobiles and fifty percent more people than buses. Streetcars , while not non-polluting (since they require electrical power), at least remove the pollution from where it has its deadliest effect - high density center city areas. Further, streetcars are a pleasure to ride, are devoid of the noxious fumes created by buses and are aesthetically pleasing.
One of the major reasons streetcars went out - and will have a hard time returning - is that they compete directly with the automobile. At the time of their demise, anything that competed with the car was considered unpatriotic, anti-Christian and perhaps even a bit perverted. A decade later, as we wheeze our way through the atmospheric swamp that covers our major cities, we are beginning to view the car with a bit more skepticism. Not enough, to be sure, to do anything serious about restricting its use, but the first glimmers of comprehension are there. A generation that built its foreign policy on faith in Chiang Kai Shek and its domestic policy on faith in General Motors is beginning to doubt its wisdom. Now that Mr. Nixon has gone to China, perhaps his next major journey can be a ride on a trolley.
It is hard to write of streetcars without succumbing to nostalgia and laying oneself open to charges of infantile romanticism. But the reason one feels nostalgia is, after all, because one misses something one thinks was good. And since the choice of transportation modes is in part determined by psychological factors, as any Freudian analysis of the automobile in American society will point out, a system that engenders a certain amount of romantic attachment may also guarantee itself ridership as well.
Recently the city of Toronto reversed itself and decided not to end streetcar servi^ there. Said Ralph Day, chairman of the local transit commission, the streetcars are "liked by all users and detested by all motorists." Day has given us here a capsule criterion for the ideal urban transportation system. If we are to be-serious about building mass transit we must confront the automobile directly.
It is not enough just to provide alternatives to the car; we must put obstacles in its path.
One of the many fraudulent aspects of the Metro subway is that it is really designed not to compete with the automobile. One need look no further, than the freeway plans. The highway lobby hasn't whittled its ambitions one inch because of the prospect of Metro. Every freeway that was planned before Metro is still being pushed by highway builders. . . .
Metro has plenty of other problems as a mass transit system. It costs too much, for one thing. . . As the largest single public works project in the world's history, Metro hardly qualifies as an economy. There is no doubt that DC could get more mass transit for its money by not building a subway and turning instead to a mixture of surface mass transit including rail commuter lines, streetcars, buses and jitneys.
Secondly, Metro has already disrupted many communities in the city and will disrupt many more. Businesses and homes are being lost as Metro reveals its true nature as not merely an underground transportation system, but an aboveground land development scheme. Metro joined urban renewal as a major element in the city's reverse land reform program, which takes land out of the hands of the many and puts it in the hands of a. few. A surface transit system would not have been as amenable to such cynical and deceitful expropriation of land.
Thirdly, Metro is primarily another means of providing safe, fast entrance and egress to DC for non-taxpaying suburban parasites. A streetcar system, along with other surface transit facilities, would be much more orientated to the needs of the local citizenry, as it was when it existed.
Fourthly, Metro is inflexible. Where Metro goes, it will stay. The cost of adding new lines, or abandoning them, would be astronomical. Since a city is always in a state of flux, there is a need for a transit system that can bend to meet changing situations. A surface system is much more adaptable. . .
Let us not forget that we live in the city that, more than any other, has surrendered itself to the automobile. Of course, it began a long time ago. The original L1Enfant Plan of 1791 proposed that 59% of the area of the federal city be set aside for highways. Thanks to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the Congress, the first highway lobby was restrained somewhat, but L'Enfant's successors have more than made up for the loss.
Other cities have shown considerably more wisdom, and today some of these transit-oriented towns are taking another look at streetcars. Eisen reports that "Boston and San Francisco, aided by the U.S. Department of Transportation, have agreed upon the specifications for a new generation of trolleys to equip their remaining lines. . . San Francisco even has plans - and the promise of federal money - to expand its electric streetcar system as well as to renovate its cable car lines." And one of the least nostalgic men around, DC Transit's O. Roy Chalk himself recently wrote Eisen: "Maybe the reason passenger losses developed (in the transit industry) was not higher fares but elimination of trolleys. It is an interesting concept.
How about a new trolley system, instead of a subway, with automatic (i.e. reserved) trolley lanes?"If a streetcar system were built here, there is no reason that it should be a replica of the former one. The reserved lanes suggested by Chalk would be one improvement. Use of cars in tandem, as is done in Boston, is another. The streetcar could be just one element of a rational, flexible, urban-focused, economical transit system. . . The unused commuter rail lines that lead into the District could be turned into mass transit systems. And a range of bus types, from small jitneys (like airport limousines) to double-deckers, could supplement the rail systems, replacing the single-size buses that DC Transit uses on nearly all its routes. It is not likely that the government or business interests will press for these improvements.
It must come from the riders. The whole history of mass transit in this country is one of politics first, riders last. When jitneys started competing with streetcars in the early part of the century, the trolley companies got the courts and state legislatures to drive them out of business.
Later, as Eisen points out, "A national transit holding company allied with bus-manufacturing interests. . . embarked upon a deliberate program of replying trolleys with buses in dozens of cities from Baltimore to Oakland." And, of course, the bus companies got their come-uppance not long after as the auto craze was fostered by a combination of highway builders, car companies, and cooperative public officials.
The other day I saw an official of the Department of Transportation wearing a button that proclaimed: "Mix Your Modes." It's a nice sentiment, but one that has yet to gain credance in local transportation planning. Yesterday's fad was the freeway; today it's Metro. But monomania won't solve our transit problems. We have lots of different places to go and we need a variety of ways to get there. Streetcars should be one of them. Then getting there will no longer be half a pain.
WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE SUBURBS?
James Kunstler, NY Times - There are many ways of describing the fiasco of suburbia, but these days I refer to it as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.
I say this because American suburbia requires an infinite supply of cheap energy in order to function and we have now entered a permanent global energy crisis that will change the whole equation of daily life. Having poured a half-century of our national wealth into a living arrangement with no future - and linked our very identity with it - we have provoked a powerful psychology of previous investment that will make it difficult for us to let go, change our behavior, and make other arrangements.
Compounding the problem is the fact that we ditched our manufacturing economy for a suburban sprawl building economy (a.k.a. the housing bubble), meaning we came to base our economy on building even more stuff with no future. . .
Here's what I think will happen: First, we are in great danger of mounting a futile campaign to sustain the unsustainable, that is, of defending suburbia at all costs.
In fact, it is already underway. One symptom of this is that the only subject under discussion about our energy predicament is how can we keep running all our cars by other means. Even the leading environmentalists talk of little else. We don't get it. The Happy Motoring era is over. No combination of alt fuels - solar, wind, nuclear, tar sands, oil-shale, offshore drilling, used French-fry oil - will allow us to keep running the interstate highway system, Wal-Marts, and Walt Disney World.
The automobile will be a diminishing presence in our lives, whether we like it or not. Further proof of our obdurate cluelessness in these matters is the absence of any public discussion about restoring the passenger railroad system - even as the airline industry is also visibly dying. The campaign to sustain suburbia and all its entitlements will result in a tragic squandering of our dwindling resources and capital.
The suburbs have three destinies, none of them exclusive: as materials salvage, as slums, and as ruins. In any case, the suburbs will lose value dramatically, both in terms of usefulness and financial investment. Most of the fabric of suburbia will not be "fixed" or retrofitted, in particular the residential subdivisions. They were built badly in the wrong places. We will have to return to traditional modes of inhabiting the landscape - villages, towns, and cities, composed of walkable neighborhoods and business districts - and the successful ones will have to exist in relation to a productive agricultural hinterland, because petro-agriculture (as represented by the infamous 3000-mile Caesar salad) is also now coming to an end. Fortunately, we have many under-activated small towns and small cities in favorable locations near waterways. This will be increasingly important as transport of goods by water regains importance.
We face an epochal demographic shift, but not the one that is commonly expected: from suburbs to big cities. Rather, we are in for a reversal of the 200-year-long trend of people moving from the farms and small towns to the big cities. People will be moving to the smaller towns and smaller cities because they are more appropriately scaled to the limited energy diet of the future. I believe our big cities will contract substantially - even if they densify back around their old cores and waterfronts. They are products, largely, of the 20th-century cheap energy fiesta and they will be starved in the decades ahead.
One popular current fantasy I hear often is that apartment towers are the greenest mode of human habitation. On the contrary, we will discover that the skyscraper is an obsolete building type, and that cities overburdened with them will suffer a huge liability - Manhattan and Chicago being the primary examples. Cities composed mostly of suburban-type fabric - Houston, Atlanta, Orlando, et al - will also depreciate sharply. The process of urban contraction is likely to be complicated by ethnic tensions and social disorder.
As petro-agriculture implodes, we'll have to raise our food differently, closer to home, and at a finer and smaller scale. This new agricultural landscape will be inhabited differently, since farming will require more human attention. The places that are not able to grow enough food locally are not likely to make it. Phoenix and Las Vegas will be shadows of what they are now, if they exist at all.
These days, an awful lot of people - the production builders, the realtors - are waiting for the bottom in the real-estate industry with hopes that the suburban house-building orgy will resume. They are waiting in vain. The project of suburbia is over. We will build no more of it. Now we're stuck with what's there. Sometimes whole societies make unfortunate decisions or go down tragic pathways. Suburbia was ours.
JULY 2008
JAMES KUNSTLER ON THE END OF SUBURBIA
JUNE 2008
AMERICA'S OTHER HOUSING CRISIS
KATRINA KIDS FACE LIFELONG HEALTH PROBLEMS
MAY 2008
WHITE GENTRIFIERS MEET THEIR BLACK NEIGHBORS. . . THROUGH THE WEB
IN URBAN TRAFFIC, TIMING IS EVERYTHING
NEW ORLEANS LEVEE LEAKING AGAIN
NEW ORLEANS: NO RIGHT OF RETURN
IS AMSTERDAM TURNING INTO A PRUDISH BACKWATER?
WHITE GENTRIFIERS MEET THEIR BLACK NEIGHBORS. . . .THROUGH THE WEB
I've lived on Washington's Capitol Hill for some 20 years in two spurts - including editing a neighborhood paper during the time of the riots in the 1960s - but I could not recall anything like the hostility, sense of entitlement and insensitivity of recent messages that started cropping on a local listserv in response to a few teenage muggings, for which responsibility was quickly assigned a nearby public housing project, Potomac Gardens. The project has been there for decades; many of the complainants have only recently arrived on the Hill, and, as in other gentrfying parts of town, are demanding that their new neighborhood meet their standards. One resident even suggest hiring Blackwater to deal with the problem, while someone else proposed a march, not on city hall or the police station, but on the public housing project itself. It was all pretty depressing - until other voices began to be heard and I realized I was getting a unique view of how the Internet can serve as mediator, introducing people who might otherwise never meet. Here are a few excerpts from the discussion. - Sam Smith
-- Why not march through Potomac Gardens to protest and call attention to at least the following: the consistently awful management of PG and places like it in the city; the inherent unfairness of the disproportionate number of calls for police and ambulance service to -- or as a result of -- residents residing, on the dole, at PG; the childish absurdity and paucity of the "no-snitch" code embraced and perpetuated by PG residents; the ineffectual lip-service paid to those of us who fund, through our taxes, places throughout the city like PG, but who are constantly victimized by its residents and particularly by the children of its lease-holders; the absurdity of DC's juvenile shield laws that seem to fly in the face of the 1st Amendment when it comes to sharing information. . . and finally, the simplest, we're just all sick of the crap we have been force-fed by our civic leaders, PC pundits, and apologists alike, that living in an economically, racially, and demographically diverse urban environment entails accepting that we should expect to be assaulted, stolen from, and abused by those among us who are deemed "less fortunate?" - S&P
A number of other white neighbors supported the idea but then. . .
-- I must say that I am alarmed by the idea of an angry mob storming Potomac Gardens and other public housing developments. . . I do not in any way underestimate the severity of the problem and the frustration and anger over these incidents, but a mass demonstration makes no distinction between the "good" parents and delinquent parents, the good kids and the bad. It comes across as an us/them confrontation, "we" the homeowners and "you" the "welfare beneficiaries of tax dollars." I don't like the sound of it and I don't see it as a way to promote any kind of dialogue or meaningful improvement. - Marika Rosen
-- I disagree with you. There needs to be a firmer and clearer establishment of "us" versus "them", specifically in the area of violent crime and victimization. We need to send a message that among "us," regardless of race and demographics, we do not tolerate being victimized by "them," consisting of people who directly and indirectly contribute to the violence against "us" and our victimization. I'm not suggesting writing off this generation of kids residing in places like PG, but I am stating emphatically that the time has come to forcefully send the message to them, their parents and their apologists that we, as a civilized and peace-loving segment of the greater community have had enough. That it is unacceptable for anybody living among us to violently and brutally assault and rob us.
- I feel for you and am so sorry about what happened to you on Tuesday night. I support your efforts to bring the community together to make our neighborhood safer. I've got to say, though, that a march on people's homes isn't the way to go. I know you're not trying to intimidate innocent families, and again, I fully appreciate your anger and desire to take back our streets, but honestly some of what I've read makes me think of KKK marches in the 60s. I agree with Tom and others who've said the main message is that we want to be safe in our neighborhoods. I like the idea of a broad-based march, but not a march on Potomac Gardens. - Marc
--- When I lived in Philly "Take Back the Night" marches were common and frequent. . . but these weren't people marching on the MLK Projects or the South Broad high rises. . . This was making a statement about the rights of people to walk down a sidewalk, sit on their porch or let their kids play on the stoop . . . I think that starting an idea with the assumption that people will turn this into a race and class thing is to allow it to become a statement that people aren't trying to make. This isn't about tearing down PG. . . t's about being able to be safe in our neighborhoods.
--- I honestly wonder if people know how they sound talking about the people who live in Potomac Gardens et al and the black kids in this neighborhood?
I by no stretch of the imagination think that what the kids who have been attacking people are right. I do think that they should be punished. That being said, every black youth who crosses your path in this neighborhood doesn't live in Potomac Gardens et al. I know of many black kids who live in a house just as nice as many of yours.
Also, did it occur to you that many of these kids are pissed off because their families have been displaced by the crazy prices of homes around here? The houses that they knew as their Grandma's, Aunties, cousin's are now yours. Yes, their anger is displaced but just think about it for a second. Then there is the fact that many of these kids are kids that have had to leave the neighborhood because their families couldn't afford the houses anymore and they come back to hang with their friends they grew up with. . . which again means they didn't come from the projects or section 8 housing.
I hope that you don't look at my daughter and just assume because she's black that she's in the projects. I mean really, we black people can and do amount to more than that.
This whole discussion has taken on an elitist, racist, angry mob slant. Isn't the whole idea to find a productive way to stop this? Can't something be done without making it look like this list is saying "hey all you poor black people, we don't want your kind around here?" I suddenly don't feel so welcome in this neighborhood anymore. - Manda (A single black parent who hopes her daughter never has to feel that she isn't wanted in her neighborhood!)
-- If you hadn't noticed, Potomac Gardens and the other low-income housing in the area are predominantly housed by African Americans. How could Manda, Bessie, or I not be offended by the tone and focus of your "idea". and - to make matters worse, your subsequent postings continue to suggest that low-income residents (a) - don't have morals; (b) don't know how to raise their children; and (c) - don't value living in a crime-free neighborhood.
I wonder what your exposure to inner-city life has been. I wonder just how many low-income housing projects you've lived near. And finally, I wonder if you really understand the dynamics of crime. Your focus on the low-income areas of our neighborhood and the people within them is the very thing that angers minorities (and maybe non-minorities) faced with an influx of "gentrifiers". This "us" versus "them" mentality is exactly what divides a community. How can you even suggest this approach and use "us" versus "them" in a message about building a community against crime??
Your repeated defenses of your statements later in the postings really demonstrate your ignorance of how to effectively deal with these kinds of issues. And I'm not saying I'm an expert on crime prevention or community development, but I'm pretty sure that community development can't result in a march directed on poor folks who are in our community.
In the past, we tried to combat crime by reaching out to our neighbors in hard-hit areas and encouraging them to join in the fight. To me, this would mean knocking on the doors of your neighbors who you don't ordinarily talk to and ask them if they would be willing to be more active in a neighborhood watch. . . or perhaps if they would participate more regularly in the Orange Hat activities or other. Or simply ask people to leave their porch lights on and call 311. It would not mean organizing a posse and marching on the homes of innocents and criminals, demanding change. How do you know that those criminals are even based in Potomac Gardens? How can running in the direction of a complex mean that the crime emanates from that complex? It might be your neighbor's nephew visiting his aunt who engaged in criminal mischief. But you'll never know because your blinders have you directed toward the low-income side of town.
For my part, I will continue to try and work within the community (insofar as my work schedule allows) with additional neighborhood watches, leaving my porch light on, and keeping a vigilant eye. I would not mind meeting with city officials to see if they have any ideas about how we can address these concerns - but I don't think the Housing Authority is the source for a solution . . .
I fully expect to get a heated response from you or others, but please think and breathe before writing back - I did, and I think calming down is what I needed to do. Please think about what you've said in past postings (perhaps re-read them) and think about what others have said in response to the postings and maybe we can come up with a more constructive solution to crime in the area - one other than a "march" on a housing project that some have only assumed holds criminals. - Rochelle, African American
--- I have been watching the conversation of the past several days, trying to figure out how to comment constructively. I'm pretty sure this post will fail spectacularly, but I am too angry and ashamed to stay quiet any longer.
Martin Luther King and his fellow marchers were Americans protesting immoral laws that rendered them second-class citizens. For people with every advantage (affluent, educated, white) to invoke Dr. King's name as they plan a march on their disadvantaged neighbors appalls me.
There have been constructive voices, people who speak of building alliances across racial and economic lines to achieve a common goal. But so many of the posts to this list have been angry and vindictive and, yes, racist and classist. (You don't need to use the n-word to be racist; repeat the word "babymomma" enough times and you've achieved the same effect. Likewise, saying, "it's because they're poor" is pretty much the definition of classism.)
I can't figure out what this march is supposed to achieve, either. I saw a reference to closing Potomac Gardens ­ what, so homeless kids are less likely to commit crime?
Someone mentioned threatening parents of truant children with jail time. I must've missed the news that putting parents in prison improves their children's prospects ­ I thought the evidence pretty clearly demonstrated the opposite.
If you're so passionate about reducing juvenile crime, how about proposing an intensive mentoring program at Potomac Gardens, so we can reach kids before they mug someone?
Another poster mentioned the carrot and the stick. Sticks might work on donkeys, but carrots are far more effective at changing human behavior. (Sticks tend to piss us off.) A lower birth rate isn't a cause of affluence; it comes as a result of it. If we want young women to stop having a lot of children at an early age, we have to increase their opportunities so they have an incentive not to. If we want young men to steer clear of their criminal behavior, likewise: They need an incentive not to.
What if HillEast funded a modest scholarship toward the college tuition of any child at Potomac Gardens who earned his or her high school diploma and did not get pregnant or get into trouble with the police? That's an incentive to straighten up and fly right.
A march whose message seems to be "We're rich and white and better than you, get out of our way!" might be more satisfying than other, more constructive options ­ but it's an incentive to commit mayhem.
Look, I get it: You're scared and angry. Guess what? So are those kids. Scared they'll have to leave the only home they've known, scared that their neighborhood is changing, scared they'll never know anything but poverty, scared they'll die before they're 20. The truth is, they have a lot more reason to be scared than you do. And just because they're expressing their fear as anger doesn't mean you can't come up with something more constructive. - Molly Wyman, Hill resident for 40 years come Tuesday
--- Hey Molly. . . you and I live fairly close to each other, so let's talk about who is appalled, and let's talk about fear. Think of this. . . if MLK was alive today, would he be appalled to know that he gave his life to civil rights, and this is how the kids and families use those civil rights against white people. Would he be appalled that these young black kids are committing racially motivated hate crimes. I think both you and I know the answer is a resounding yes, he would be appalled. Hey white people deserve peace and justice too!
So, he fought to end immoral laws that rendered blacks being placed as second class citizens. Well, I'm not about to become a second class citizen to the criminals. I'm not about to live in fear that my partner and I (gay partner, not business partner) might get beaten down by some young ignorant thug who has an equally ignorant parental structure. That is my fear everyday, that my tall skinny blonde boyfriend might not make it home from the metro because of these thugs. I'm not going to stand for it. I don't care "why" they are that way. I don't care if they are poor, or black, or have baby mommas, or were a product of one. I care about my loved one getting home from the three block walk safe. . . Clearly, you will not be part of the solution.
--- I suppose I'll attend to be community like. . . but is charging those rock throwing arms of the "gang of four" with our home cooked meals really going to solve the problem? I think, probably not. Then again, they'll know we are out of our homes, so please make sure to lock your roof hatches.
--- I'm proposing a weekly Friday Night Potluck Dinner and Discussion to be held at Potomac Gardens ­ open to all members of our community. I will invite Chief Lanier and Commander Kamperin from MPD to join us, as well as the leadership at Potomac Gardens, and I hope to create a conversation about safety, perceptions, and how our neighborhood builds strength in the community among all neighbors.
I'll host the first Friday Night Potluck in two weeks on Friday May 30th, 6:00 ­ 7:30 pm. Given Memorial Day Weekend next week, I think this is our first opportunity. We'll hold them each week on Friday evening through the month of June and if the residents feel we need to continue, then we can keep it going on a weekly basis after that. - Best, Tommy (the white city councilmember from the area)
CANDIDATES DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT CITIES
END OF THE ROAD FOR CUL-DE-SAC?
URBAN KIDS BOOMING IN DC, NY, ELSEWHERE
HALF OF NEW ORLEANS POOR PERMANENTLY DISPLACED
MINNEAPOLIS RANKED MOST LITERATE CITY
THE IGNORED GREENNESS OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION
TOP BICYCLE CITIES OF THE WORLD
GARBAGE BURNING OVENS FOR MEGACITIES
THE NEW URBAN CORRUPTION: SELLING OFF PUBLIC ICONS AND PUBLIC SPACES
THREE GUIDES TO BUILDING NEW COMMUNITIES
GAY NEIGHBORHOODS BEING HIT BY GENTRIFICATION, TOO
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE URBAN RENAISSANCE?
WAL-MART REPEATEDLY ARGUES THAT WAL-MART LOWERS PROPERTY VALUES
SOME PLACES QUESTIONING THEIR TACTICS IN DEALING WITH GANGS
NOVEL IDEA FOR THE HOMELESS: GIVE THEM A HOME
CITIES TRYING TO LIMIT TEARDOWNS
APRIL 2008
WHAT'S TO LOVE ABOUT A CITY
If you listen to the average planner or big city politician, you'd think that urban happiness is the product of massive redevelopment, sports stadiums and convention centers. Your editor lives in a neighborhood that has two stadiums on its edges but has happily managed to avoid much of the other manipulations that pass for urban progress, having been largely laid out in the 19th and early 20th century. Washington's Capitol Hill is a community characterized by row houses; it is almost evenly divided between owners and tenants (many of the latter living in basement apartments). It is about 60% black and in an area of a few square miles has 18,000 jobs, its own waterfront, a beloved hardware store and a farmer's market. It also has the third highest density in the city - over 15,000 people per square mile - but contrary to the developer-serving mythology of the smart growth movement, it accomplished this with few high rises (although brutalist planners of the DC have recently torn down much of its public housing and are replacing it with condo towers). Only 16% of the population lives in buildings with ten or more units. In other words, it is an urban community that works, has density without human warehousing and is quite self-sufficient. It is, in short, a good model of how a city should function - in no small part because it has done it itself without too much inference from the urban planners and pols.
A bulletin board for one of the communities of Capitol Hill, Hill East, recently asked readers what they liked about their neighborhood. The answers are exceptional only because they offer a good sense of what attracts people to any well working 'hood. Note that the only governmental contribution mentioned in any of the replies is the Metro subway system and the weekly testing of the DC Jail siren. The answers are a good example of why so much of what we hear and read has so little to do with what really makes cities work. Some of the replies:
I like Speilberg Park (even with its graffiti and trash).
I like walking and riding my bike everywhere.
I like the sausage and cheese from Eastern Market.
I like Frager's [Hardware Store]
I like Troop 500.
I like the long growing season in our urban heat island.
I like the racial diversity of my neighbors and the fact that my daughter doesn't seem to care about skin color at all.
I like the tall trees on E St.
I like our proximity to the Metro.
I like chatting with neighbors from my front porch.
I like all the well-maintained flower boxes along the sidewalks. I like maintaining flower boxes.
I like that Jennifer Howard organizes so many neighborhood cleanups.
I like that Jim Myer is always goading us into action.
I like that Scott Christian runs the "toxic drop-off shuttle" each time DC has a hazardous waste collection.
I like all the babies in strollers.
I like the lattes at Bread and Chocolate.
I love the salsa at La Lomita.
I like it when kids at Lincoln Park ask if they can pet my dog.
I like my neighbors; they say hello to me every day.
I like the man on his porch that asks me what I am cooking on my way home from Safeway.
I like the kids chalk art on the sidewalk.
I like the guy that sells Street Sense.
I like watching the basketball, hockey, football and others sports being played at the school on D and 12.
I like the crazy lights on the house around the corner.
I like talking to the artists in the Eastern Market.
I like.. . .
Being able to walk my dog in Congressional Cemetery before sunrise and watch the big sun rise over the ridge east of Anacostia River
Seeing a full moon also rise over the same eastern ridge
Seeing folks I know while in Metro and sharing a conversation with them while riding to work
Occasional sound of a train whistle when a train crosses over the Anacostia River
DC Jail siren tests every Saturday at 12 noon
Hearing the songs of mockingbirds
Level terrain throughout the neighborhood
Not having to mow a lawn
I like the provolone cheese at Eastern Market
I like the prosciutto at Litteri
I like the fish tacos at the Argonaut
I like the dance classes at the Joy of Motion
I like the people who ride the X8
I like the tree in front of my house, even though the roots are knocking our sidewalk bricks out of whack
I like . . .
that the Marvelous Market at Eastern Market stocks Skybars, which I haven't been able to find for years.
that we have an amazing book store like Riverby Books.
being able to say to friends when picking a place to eat, "Do you like Belgian?"
margaritas at Banana Cafe.
watching the 4th of July fireworks from the roof of our front porch and realizing that people all across the country are sitting in their living rooms doing the same thing.
Things I love about our hood:
The cute blond cheese lady at the cheese kiosk in Eastern Market who never lets me walk by without feeding me some cheese.
Walking my dog to Eastern Market and noticing how many people know his name and not mine.
The ladies in their fancy hats that come out of the Church by the CVS, along with all the singing that goes on during their service.
The moral: the next time your city government talks about "revitalizing" your neighborhood, ask the people who live there what they already like about the place. You may find it is pretty revitalized already.BRINGING URBAN PLACES ALIVE WITHOUT SPENDING MILLIONS FEBRUARY 2008
STUDY FINDS RED LIGHT CAMS INCREASE ACCIDENTS
RICH SHOPES, THE TAMPA TRIBUNE Cameras at intersections increase, not decrease, accidents, according to a University of South Florida study published the day after Hillsborough County commissioners voted to allow the cameras at 10 intersections. The university's yearlong review, published in the campus journal Florida Public Health Review, warns that drivers are at higher risk of having accidents at intersections where cameras are installed.
"People see a yellow light and normally they would drive through it, but at camera intersections they do the quick stop. They slam on the brakes and that means everybody else behind them slams on the brakes," said Barbara Langland-Orban, one of three co-authors of the study and an associate professor in USF's Department of Health Policy and Management.
USF examined five red-light camera studies. It concluded that two were flawed and found that the other three drew the same basic conclusion about cameras at intersections. . .
She pointed to a seven-year study by the Virginia Transportation Research Council that showed crashes at intersections with the cameras increased 29 percent.
Another study, by the Urban Transit Institute at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, looked at almost five years' worth of data. The study concluded that accident rates increased 40 percent at intersections with cameras; injury crashes rose between 40 percent and 50 percent.
The USF review contradicts other studies showing a decline in wrecks, including a report by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that is frequently cited by camera advocates. . .
Instead of using cameras to catch red-light runners, the study suggests that engineers look at the timing of yellow lights and make sure the signals are visible to motorists.
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/mar/12/na-red-light-cameras-increase-accidents-usf-study-/
WALL ST JOURNAL - For the first time in nearly a century, railroads are making large investments in their networks -- adding sets of tracks, straightening curves that force engines to slow and expanding tunnels for bigger trains. Their campaign is altering the corridors of American commerce, more so than any other development since interstate highways spread to the interior.
For decades, railroads spent little on expansion, even tore up surplus track and shrank routes. But since 2000 they've spent $10 billion to expand tracks, build freight yards and buy locomotives, and they have $12 billion more in upgrades planned.
Increasingly, railroads are moving finished consumer goods, often made in Asia, from ports to major cities. . . Railroad operators are pressing for advantage over their main competitor, long-haul trucking, which has struggled with rising fuel prices, driver shortages and highway congestion. Railroads say a load can be moved by rail using about a third as much fuel as it takes to haul it by truck. . .
Trucking accounted for 82% of the U.S.'s truck-and-rail intercity-freight spending in 2004, up from 78% in 1990, according to Eno Transportation Foundation, a research organization in Washington, D.C. But trucking companies, notably industry giant J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc. of Lowell, Ark., are using railroads for the long-haul part of some trips because it's cheaper. . .
It's been a century since railroads embarked on a similar spate of capital investment. Between 1900 and World War I, they launched a huge rebuilding program across the U.S. midsection to handle freight and passenger trains. Traffic was booming as the economy roared back from a financial panic in the 1890s. Railroads added second, third and fourth sets of tracks along main routes, built tunnels and bridges and installed stronger locomotives.
After World War II, though, cars began wiping out passenger-train service. New interstate highways unleashed trucks as a freight competitor. By the 1970s, U.S. railroads were deep into a decline. . .
JANUARY 2008
THE NATION'S FIRST GREEN HOMELESS SHELTER
INSIDE BAY AREA - With solar panels supplying electricity and water-based hydronic heaters warming rooms in the 125-bed shelter, the Crossroads building of the East Oakland Community Project is said to be the first "green" homeless shelter in the nation. It replaces a cold, damp and leaky building up the road on International that has been housing homeless for the past 17 years.
"You'll wake up here and feel good because it's an environment that is healthy. We are asking our people to deal with some heavy issues, so it is best that we support their health," said Wendy Jackson, executive director of the East Oakland Community Project. "Many of the clients are ill, about 60 percent are ill, often with chronic diseases of asthma, diabetes, so we wanted to do whatever we can to make this as healthy an environment as possible," she said. The building, with high windows for natural light and walls painted with a green paint that does not emit toxins, has an airy, good feel to it.
HIGH RISE TOWN HOUSES WITH GARDENS
TREE HUGGER - Rotterdam designer Reinier de Jong notes: "Housing in big city centers seems to consist of small apartments. High rise equals apartments. Or so it seems. However many cities economically really need well-to-do middle class dwellers. They flee to suburbia as soon as salaries go up and kids arrive."
So he takes the standard suburban typology, the two story house with a garden, and stacks them on top of each other, "so we will diminish the suburban sprawl that is swallowing up our precious land.""The project TUIN ('garden') combines high rise with a typical suburban housing typology: a two storey dwelling with garden. A height of seven meters and a depth of one meter of soil guarantees a true garden. Enough for sunlight, rain and wind to enter and nourish trees, shrubs, flowers and grass."
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/01/reinier_de_jong.php
DECEMBER 2007
MATHEMATICIANS SOLVE MYSTERY OF TRAFFIC JAMS
PHYSORG - Mathematicians from the University of Exeter have solved the mystery of traffic jams by developing a model to show how major delays occur on our roads, with no apparent cause.
The team developed a mathematical model to show the impact of unexpected events such as a lorry pulling out of its lane on a dual carriageway. Their model revealed that slowing down below a critical speed when reacting to such an event, a driver would force the car behind to slow down further and the next car back to reduce its speed further still.
The result of this is that several miles back, cars would finally grind to a halt, with drivers oblivious to the reason for their delay. The model predicts that this is a very typical scenario on a busy highway (above 15 vehicles per km. . .
http://www.physorg.com/news117283969.html
THE GREAT NEIGHBORHOOD BOOK
By Jay Walljasper
Abandoned lots and litter-strewn pathways, or rows of green beans and pockets of wildflowers? Graffiti-marked walls and desolate bus stops, or shady refuges and comfortable seating? What transforms a dingy, inhospitable area into a dynamic gathering place? How do individuals take back their neighborhood?
Neighborhoods decline when the people who live there lose their connection and no longer feel part of their community. Recapturing that sense of belonging and pride of place can be as simple as planting a civic garden or placing some benches in a park.
The Great Neighborhood Book explains how most struggling communities can be revived, not by vast infusions of cash, not by government, but by the people who live there. The author addresses such challenges as traffic control, crime, comfort and safety, and developing economic vitality. Using a technique called "placemaking"-- the process of transforming public space -- this exciting guide offers inspiring real-life examples that show the magic that happens when individuals take small steps, and motivate others to make change.
Jay Walljasper is a Senior Fellow of Project for Public Spaces (PPS), whose mission is to create and sustain enriching public places that build communities. He is a former editor of Utne Reader and currently Executive Editor of Ode Magazine.
BUSH REGIME DESTROYING PUBLIC HOUSING IN NEW ORLEANS
BLOOMBERG - In New Orleans, public housing doesn't mean bleak high-rise towers. The city has thousands of units with Georgian brickwork and lacy ironwork porches that came through Hurricane Katrina barely scathed.
Yet the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, last week approved $31 million worth of contracts to demolish 4,500 public housing units of such high quality that some are on the National Register of Historic Places.
The demolitions, scheduled to start as soon as Dec. 15, come as the city faces an unprecedented shortage of rental housing. To add insult to injury, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced last week that it would evict hundreds of residents of emergency trailer parks in New Orleans over the next six months, even though they don't have houses to return to.
Merry Christmas, poor people. . .
New Orleans tracts have been among the worst managed, suffering most of their damage from neglect by the Housing Authority of New Orleans. HUD took over the local agency and had determined before the storm to evict residents and demolish thousands of units.
Low-income housing advocates were not the only defenders of these projects. Sturdily built and sensitive to local history, the tracts always had the potential to lose their "project" stigma and join the rest of the city as an invigorating mixed-income neighborhood. . .
HUD and the local housing authority have steadfastly resisted revamping thousands of units on four other public housing sites, preferring to bid them out for new construction of mixed-income developments that will take years to build and house a fraction of the neediest.
Washington policy makers see homeowners as the only class of residents who deserve aid. So billions have been poured into financing to stretch inadequate insurance payouts, like "soft" second mortgages that become grants. And these programs have worked. Neighborhoods of mostly owner-occupants are swarming with contractors completing repairs.
Renters -- about half the households in New Orleans -- have been left to fend for themselves. Before the storm, many landlords could make a profit renting out aging ranch houses or Creole cottages at modest rates. Few were subsidized, most served people of modest income and many are remarkable works of historic architecture that could catalyze more growth if fixed up.
ROBERT DAVID SULLIVAN, BOSTON GLOBE - In all, there were 16 gay bars in Boston and Cambridge, according to Pink Pages directories from 1993 and 1994. Today, that number has been cut to less than half. . . The gay population may have political clout and the right to marry in Massachusetts, but it has fewer and fewer public spaces to call its own.
The disappearance of places like Buddies and Chaps may sound like a problem limited to gay men, but it is part of a much larger trend reshaping American cities. As gay bars vanish, so go bookstores, diners, and all kinds of spaces that once allowed "blissful public congregation," as sociologist Ray Oldenburg described their function in his 1989 book "The Great Good Place."
In New York, the Jewish deli - a staple of the city's identity - has all but vanished. In the Boston area, many of Harvard Square's bookstores, Kenmore Square's student eateries, and myriad other places that guaranteed a diverse urban experience have closed their doors, replaced by a far more uniform lineup of bank branches, chain stores, and upscale restaurants. . .
Oldenburg calls public gathering spots a "third place" where we can temporarily step out of our household and workplace roles. Besides taverns, he cites drugstores (the kind with soda fountains), pool halls, and barber shops as examples. . .
NOVEMBER 2007
NY TIMES - Seattle now recycles 44 percent of its trash, compared with the national average of around 30 percent. . . Its goal, city waste management officials said, is to reach 60 percent by 2012 and 72 percent by 2025. In many other parts of the country, recycling is in the doldrums . . . As the law now stands in Seattle, residents of single family houses are allowed to mix food scraps with yard waste, which is then shipped off to be composted. Recycling of food scraps will become mandatory in 2009.
The new law may add yet another container for curbside pickup, which already includes receptacles for non-recyclable trash, yard waste, glass and other recyclables. . .
Seattle also found itself in a recycling skid a few years back, losing ground to apathy despite being a pacesetter in the boom years of the late '80s. "We hit a cardboard ceiling," said Tim Croll of the Seattle Public Utilities.
The city's response was to ban paper and cardboard from non-recyclable garbage - with enforcement penalties - followed by allowing food scraps to be mingled with yard waste.
ANOTHER REASON YOU MAY NOT WANT TO WRECK THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM
JOEL KOTKIN, WALL STREET JOURNAL - For much of the past decade, business recruiters, cities and urban developers have focused on the "young and restless," the "creative class," and the so-called "yuspie"--the young urban single professional. Cities, they've said, should capture this so-called "dream demographic" if they wish to inhabit the top tiers of the economic food chain and enjoy the fastest and most sustained growth.
This focus--epitomized by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm's risible "Cool Cities" initiative--is less successful than advertised. Cincinnati, Baltimore, Cleveland, Newark, Detroit and Memphis have danced to the tune of the hip and the cool, yet largely remain wallflowers in terms of economic and demographic growth. Instead, an analysis of migration data by my colleagues at the Praxis Strategy Group shows that the strongest job growth has consistently taken place in those regions--such as Houston, Dallas, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham--with the largest net in-migration of young, educated families ranging from their mid-20s to mid-40s.
Urban centers that have been traditional favorites for young singles, such as Chicago, Boston, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, have experienced below-average job and population growth since 2000. San Francisco and Chicago lost population during that period; even immigrant-rich New York City and Los Angeles County have shown barely negligible population growth in the last two years, largely due to a major out-migration of middle class families.
Married people with children tend to be both successful and motivated, precisely the people who make economies go. They are twice as likely to be in the top 20% of income earners, according to the Census, and their incomes have been rising considerably faster than the national average.
There is a basic truth about the geography of young, educated people. They may first migrate to cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston or San Francisco. But they tend to flee when they enter their child-rearing years. Family-friendly metropolitan regions have seen the biggest net gains of professionals, largely because they not only attract workers, but they also retain them through their 30s and 40s. . .
Contrary to popular belief, moreover, the family is far from the brink of extinction. Most Americans, notes the Pew Research Center, still regard marriage as the ideal state. . .
The evidence thus suggests that the obsession with luring singles to cities is misplaced. Instead, suggests Paul Levy, president of Philadelphia's Center City district association, the emphasis should be on retaining young people as they grow up, marry, start families and continue to raise them.
Mr. Levy notes that the remarkable transformation of once sedate Center City--the area's population has grown to over 90,000--has indeed been due primarily to young singles, childless couples and a few "empty nesters." The proliferation of clubs, restaurants and bars has created an almost Manhattan ambiance. But he suggests that the district is reaching the limits of its success. . .
Boosters such as Mr. Levy look increasing towards reviving the traditional family neighborhoods which surround Center City. His organization has worked closely with local public and private schools, church and civic organizations to build up the support structures that might convince today's youthful inner city urbanites to remain as they start families. "Our agenda," Mr. Levy says, "has to change. We have to look at the parks, the playgrounds and the schools."
NY TIMES - With nearly 2,000 miles of small service streets bisecting blocks from the North Side to the South Side, Chicago is the alley capital of America. In its alleys, city officials say, it has the paved equivalent of five midsize airports. Part of the landscape since the city began, the alleys, mostly home to garbage bins and garages, make for cleaner and less congested main streets. But Chicago's distinction is not without disadvantages: Imagine having a duplicate set of streets, in miniature, to maintain that are prone to flooding and to dumping runoff into a strained sewer system.
What is an old, alley-laden city to do? Chicago has decided to retrofit its alleys with environmentally sustainable road-building materials under its Green Alley initiative, something experts say is among the most ambitious public street makeover plans in the country. In a larger sense, the city is rethinking the way it paves things.
In a green alley, water is allowed to penetrate the soil through the pavement itself, which consists of the relatively new but little-used technology of permeable concrete or porous asphalt. Then the water, filtered through stone beds under the permeable surface layer, recharges the underground water table instead of ending up as polluted runoff in rivers and streams.
Some of that water may even end up back in Lake Michigan, from which Chicago takes a billion gallons a year.
The new pavements are also designed to reflect heat from the sun instead of absorbing it, helping the city stay cool on hot days. They also stay warmer on cold days. The green alleys are given new kinds of lighting that conserve energy and reduce glare, city officials said, and are made with recycled materials.
The city will have completed 46 green alleys by the end of the year, and it has deemed the models so attractive that now every alley it refurbishes will be a green alley.
OCTOBER 2007
SOME PLACES QUESTIONING THEIR TACTICS IN DEALING WITH GANGS
CHANGING THE COURT - According to [an] article from the New York Times, policy makers and law enforcement leaders in jurisdictions such as Los Angeles and Texas that pioneered hard-hitting anti-gang tactics in the nineties (which included laws prohibiting two or more gang suspects from congregating in a public place, broad sweeps of suspects, and long jail sentences for gang-related crimes) think those tactics may have worsened the problems they were meant to solve by alienating poor communities from the police and hardening juvenile delinquents into serious criminals. Now, they're focusing their strategies and funding priorities on prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation. For an interesting example of what that means to the court system, and a question about the issue of culture read more.
The article cites an example of a young man, 16, who was arrested for possessing a knife at his local public school, and then arrested a second time for being high on marijuana at his alternative state school. It was only after these arrests that he decided to join a gang and commit an unarmed robbery along with several other young men. These types of charges are viewed as "minor" within the courts. While media attention and decision-making is driven by high profile killings, it is the response that the justice system makes to these low-level criminal offenses that might have the biggest impact on the gang problem.
The article also raises the issue of culture. Officials and community leaders are quoted wondering how police and communities should react when young people who are not necessarily gang affiliated wear gang style clothing and make gang gestures.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/13/us/13gang.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
CITIES TURNING BIKE FRIENDLY
CHARISE JONES, USA TODAY - "There's never been so much attention from cities collectively for cycling as a mode of transportation," says Loren Mooney, executive editor of Bicycling magazine. . . New York for the first time is creating a special lane, modeled on those used in European cities such as Copenhagen, Denmark, that will separate bicyclists from motorists. The Ninth Avenue bike lane in Manhattan is being built between a sidewalk and a lane for parked cars. . .
Chicago is striving by 2015 to have 5% of all trips shorter than 5 miles to be taken by bicycle. Mayor Richard Daley also is considering launching a bike program he saw in Paris. That effort, begun in July, allows residents and visitors to check out a bike at one location, ride free during the first half-hour and park the bike at another location near their destination.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, whose city is considered one of the friendliest to cyclists by the League of American Bicyclists, says he wants at least 10% of all trips in the city within three years to be made by bicycle.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-07-bicyclists_N.htm?csp=34GREAT MOMENTS IN ACTIVISM:
THE BLUE TAPE SCREEDTHE NEW URBAN CORRUPTION: SELLING OFF PUBLIC ICONS AND PUBLIC SPACES
DC CITY DESK - The battle to have identifiable and attractive libraries in several neighborhoods - not swallowed up in office or condo development - is being treated as a strictly local issue. It isn't. It is a citywide problem stemming from the contempt political leaders have for the citizens in contrast to their ever growing obeisance to robber baron contributors. What is at stake here is the preservation of local public icons - libraries, schools, fire stations etc - in the face of runaway corrupt development plans.
This is not just another problem for our neighborhoods or for DC. Never in history have politicians treated the symbols of community with such utter disrespect. These buildings should be places of public honor and not jammed into a high rise like they were just another coffee shop.
What's next? Will Mayor Fenty replace parks by putting grass on rooftops? Pave over the Anacostia for a new town, reducing it to the world's largest sewer?
Stay tuned.
[Yesterday, we mentioned the possibility that Mayor Fenty might start selling off city parkland. Turns out it's not a joke. It's already happening in Detroit]
http://prorev.com/2007/10/dc-tuesday_30.htm
ZACHARY GORCHOW, DETROIT FREE PRESS - One-quarter of Detroit's 367 parks could be sold under a proposal designed to help the city shed dozens of its smallest and most worn-down parks in an effort to aid others and position the land for redevelopment. More than half of the 92 parks are less than an acre in size -- so called pocket parks -- tucked in neighborhoods. Some have swing sets, jungle gyms, slides and benches. They make up 124 acres of the city's roughly 6,000 acres of parkland.
Many of those neighborhoods are no longer dense in population and are dominated by urban prairies as the result of demolished homes, conditions Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's administration cites in its proposal. The plan to sell off city parkland has generated relief among some neighbors hoping to see the lots improve and anger among those who say the city is getting rid of precious assets. . .
The scope of the proposal has alarmed members of the City Council, which must approve land sales. "It looks like every park in the city, every small park, is on here," Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. said at a meeting last week as he examined the city's list. "If we sell everything, we'll look up one day, and there won't be any place for kids to play for recreation.". . .
GAY NEIGHBOODS BEING HIT BY GENTRIFICATION, TOO
NY TIMES - [San Francisco's] most popular Halloween party, in America's largest gay neighborhood, is canceled. The once-exuberant street party, a symbol of sexual liberation since 1979 has in recent years become a Nightmare on Castro Street, drawing as many as 200,000 people, many of them costumeless outsiders, and there has been talk of moving it outside the district because of increasing violence. Last year, nine people were wounded when a gunman opened fire at the celebration.
For many in the Castro District, the cancellation is a blow that strikes at the heart of neighborhood identity, and it has brought soul-searching that goes beyond concerns about crime.
These are wrenching times for San Francisco's historic gay village, with population shifts, booming development, and a waning sense of belonging that is also being felt in gay enclaves across the nation, from Key West, Fla., to West Hollywood, as they struggle to maintain cultural relevance in the face of gentrification. . .
At the same time, cities not widely considered gay meccas have seen a sharp increase in same-sex couples. Among them: Fort Worth; El Paso; Albuquerque; Louisville, Ky.; and Virginia Beach, according to census figures and extrapolations by Dr. Gates for The New York Times. "Twenty years ago, if you were gay and lived in rural Kansas, you went to San Francisco or New York," he said. "Now you can just go to Kansas City."
In the Castro, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society held public meetings earlier this year to grapple with such questions as "Are Gay Neighborhoods Worth Saving?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/30/us/30gay.html
WAL-MART REPEATEDLY ARGUES THAT WAL-MART LOWERS PROPERTY VALUES
GOOD JOBS FIRST - When Wal-Mart proposes to build another of its giant stores, local residents often raise concerns about increased car and truck traffic, a loss of open space, higher crime rates and other negative impacts that they argue will lower the quality of life in the neighborhood and thus depress property values. The company responds to these concerns by painting a different picture, claiming that its stores provide substantial benefits to communities. Yet what Wal-Mart does not disclose in site fights--but is revealed for the first time in a new report by Good Jobs First -- is the extent to which the company later in effect concedes the point about reduced property values. Once a store has been in operation for a while, Wal-Mart frequently challenges the assessed value that local officials assign to it for tax purposes. In an effort to cut the property tax it pays to local governments--revenue that pays for public education, police and fire protection and other vital services--Wal-Mart routinely tries to belittle the value of its own facilities. . .
An examination of a 10 percent random sample of Wal-Mart's 2,833 Supercenters and discount stores in operation as of the beginning of 2005 finds that at least one assessment challenge has been filed at 35 percent, or more than one-third, of the stores. Applying that rate to all Wal-Mart stores, we estimate that the company has brought challenges at more than 1,000 of its retail outlets nationwide.
An examination of all of Wal-Mart's giant distribution centers in operation as of the same date shows that 40 percent have had an assessment challenge--this despite the fact that many of the warehouses had previously been granted property tax abatements (exempting them from property taxes in whole or in part as an economic development subsidy) when they were first built.
At many locations, Wal-Mart has filed challenges in multiple years -- either because it was not initially successful or because it wanted an even bigger tax reduction. We estimate that the company has filed a total of more than 2,100 appeals at its stores and distribution centers nationwide.
http://www.corp-research.org/archives/sep-oct07.htm
RISE OF THE SLOW CITY
TREE HUGGER - You have heard of slow food; get ready for slow cities. It is an outgrowth of the slow food movement and like it, started in Italy. According to Der Spiegel, Slow City advocates argue that small cities should preserve their traditional structures by observing strict rules: cars should be banned from city centers; people should eat only local products and use sustainable energy. In these cities, there's not much point in looking for a supermarket chain or McDonald's. There are now 42 slow cities in Italy, and more and more cities -- in Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Poland and Norway -- conform to the movement's list of strict requirements.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/10/slow_cities_spr.php
BOOKSHELF: BUILDING NEW COMMUNITY
BUILDING POWERFUL COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS: A Personal Guide to Creating Groups That Can Solve Problems and Change the World, by Michael Jacoby Brown, Long Haul Press, $19.95.
CALLING ALL RADICALS: How Grassroots Organizers Can Save Our Democracy, by Gabriel Thompson, Nation Books, $14.95.
TOOLS FOR RADICAL DEMOCRACY: How to Organize for Power in Your Community, by Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos, Chardon Press, $29.95.
BENNETT BAUMER, CITY LIMITS Three recent books serve as guides to organizers building community groups, unions and other social change organizations. Two of these works could be characterized as textbooks – "Tools For Radical Democracy," by Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos, and "Building Powerful Community Organizations," by Michael Jacoby Brown. "Calling All Radicals," by Gabriel Thompson, gives helpful tips on organizing while maintaining a more anecdotal narrative flow. . . "Tools For Radical Democracy" and "Building Powerful Community Organizations" are the most explicit about how to build organizations for social change. . . . Both books offer various case studies, rooted in Getsos' coalition-building in uptown Manhattan and Jacoby Brown's decades' worth of agitating around workplace issues across the country. The textbooks also offer exercises and work sheets at the ends of chapters on such mundane organizing work as phone banking, door knocking, media relations and preparing testimony to elected officials. . . While the above books are basically practical manuals, Thompson's "Calling All Radicals" is more directed at the heart. As a former housing organizer in central Brooklyn, Thompson believes organizers are the key to building democracy and illuminates how they do the grunt work. Thompson presents tenants standing up to slumlords, and politicians reluctant to enact a tough lead paint bill, not as case studies but as part of a social justice story. . . "Calling All Radicals" also examines Alinsky's organizing model and asks the provocative question – why do organizers do what they do, and to what end?
SEPTEMBER 2007
LATER THIS YEAR, FOR FIRST TIME, MORE THAN HALF THE WORLD WILL LIVE IN CITIES
IRIN - Somewhere, some time this year, a baby will be born on the 25th floor of a city hospital or the dirt floor of a dark slum shack; a first-year college graduate will rent a cramped apartment in lower Manhattan or a family of five will finally concede their plot of farm land to an encroaching desert - or sea - and turn towards Jakarta or La Paz or Lagos in search of a new livelihood and a new home. The arrival of this family or graduate or baby will tip the world's demographic scale and, for the first time in history, more than half the human population will live in cities.
At present, 3.3 billion people live in urban centers across the globe. By 2030 this number is predicted to reach five billion, with 95 percent of this growth in developing countries. Over the next three decades, Asia's urban population will double from 1.36 billion to 2.64 billion, Africa's city dwellers will more than double from 294 million to 742 million, while Latin America and the Caribbean will see a slower rise from about 400 million to 600 million, according to the UN Population Fund
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=73996
A DIFFERENT WAY TO SEE A CITY AUGUST 2007
THE CITY AS A HEAT PUMP
FAYE BOWERS, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - While news of global warming becomes as common as the wheeze of air conditioners, Phoenix is fighting a different, if related, problem. In part because of heavy growth - particularly in the Phoenix metro area - heat is being reflected, trapped, and absorbed in concrete, rooftops, and a maze of buildings that blocks wind. At the same time, there's little vegetation to absorb the heat, and high energy usage generates more.
It's called the "urban heat-island effect," and whatever the impact of global warming here, this phenomenon is sending the mercury rising. On Tuesday, Phoenix tied the all-time record of 28 days at 110 degrees or greater in one summer, reached in 1979 and again in 2002. If the temperature rises to 110 degrees one more day this year, Phoenix will set a record. . .
Experts say the main reason the number of 110-degree-or-higher days has risen so steadily - and steeply - is rapid growth. In the 1950s, for example, the temperature rose to 110 or higher an average of 6.7 days per year. In the 1960s it was 10.3 days per year; in the 1980s it was 19 days per year, and in the 2000s (through Aug. 21, 2007), 21.9 per year, according to the National Weather Service. . .
"Every time you use that mechanical air conditioner, you're throwing hot air back into the environment," says Jay Golden, an expert on urban climate and energy at Arizona State University in Tempe. "It's not only the sun and the pavement, but we're generating more heat because of human adaptation." . . .
The lows at night are rising, too. Three decades ago, the nighttime low here was about 30 degrees cooler than the days. Today, it is on average only 20 degrees cooler. That's because cities are slower to cool off at night, retaining their heat in roads and buildings.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0830/p01s01-wogi.htm
PARIS IN MIDST OF BIKING REVOLUTION
One month after its launch, Paris's Vélib', or "freedom bike" scheme, has turned the city cycling mad. You simply pick up a bike from one of the ubiquitous stands, ride it along for your short trip and drop it back at any random stand at your destination. The first half-hour's pedal-time is free, with charges rising steeply afterwards. Day and night, tourists, commuters and returning party animals cruise by on the chic new machines. People have joyfully discovered the cheap new way of exercising en route to work or getting home drunk after the metro closes, hence a rush of hires after 1am. There's a glut of bikes deposited at stands at the bottom of hills and none left at the top, as people freewheel down from the heights of Belleville and Montmartre.
So huge is the success of the Velib' that Paris is proclaiming a veritable "velorution", reclaiming the streets for two-wheelers. This is not the first scheme to provide bikes for cheap short-hires - Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Oslo got there first, and Lyon was the pioneer in France - but Paris aims to be the biggest. More than 1.6m hires have been registered in the first month from the 800 bike stands around the city. Currently 10,600 bikes are in circulation, but by the end of the year that will double. The unisex bikes are provided by the poster advertising company JC Decaux to Paris city hall in return for ad space in the city, so at no cost to the taxpayer. It's a political triumph for Paris's socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, and his opposite number Ken Livingstone is so impressed that he has ordered a consultation on bringing the scheme to London. . .
STUDY FINDS ONLY 30% OF KATRINA FUNDS SLATED FOR LONG TERM REBUILDING
Two years after the onslaught of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, much of the Gulf Coast is still in crisis -- and billions of federal recovery money remains bottled up or has been squandered due to red tape, failures of oversight and misguided priorities. That's the conclusion of a new report from the Institute for Southern Studies..
The study, published in collaboration with Oxfam America and the Jewish Funds for Justice, looks at 80 statistical indicators and draws on interviews with more than 40 Gulf Coast leaders to identify roadblocks to recovery, and ways federal leaders can tackle critical needs in the region like housing, jobs and coastal protection.
The Institute reveals that, out of the $116 billion in Katrina funds allocated, less than 30% has gone towards long-term rebuilding-and less than half of that 30% has been spent, much less reached those most in need.
"The President says he's written a 'big check' for the Gulf Coast, but the over 60,000 families still in FEMA trailers must be wondering if the check bounced," says Jeffrey Buchanan of the RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights and co-author of the report on Katrina spending.
Amount that Bush administration says has been spent on Gulf Coast recovery since 2005 hurricanes: $116 billion
Estimated percent of those funds that are for long-term recovery projects: 30
Percent of FEMA's 2005 disaster relief budget that was spent on administrative costs: 22
Of $16.7 billion in Community Development Block Grants earmarked for long-term Gulf Coast rebuilding, percent that had been spent as of August 2007: 30
Of $8.4 billion allocated to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for levee repair in Louisiana, percent that had been spent as of July 2007: 20
Percent of rebuilding costs that Gulf Coast local governments were required to pay up front to receive matching federal funds, due to a Stafford Act provision that Congress has since waived for the region: 25, later reduced by President Bush to 10
Percent that New York had to pay after 9/11 and Florida after Hurricane Andrew, because the federal government waived the Stafford Act's matching requirement: 0
As of June 2007, value of controversial "cost plus" Katrina contracts given out by three federal agencies, which allows companies to charge taxpayers for cost overruns and guaranteed profits: $2.4 billion
As of August 2006, value of Gulf Coast contracts that a Congressional study found were "plagued by waste, fraud, abuse or mismanagement": $8.75 billion
http://www.southernstudies.org/gulfblueprint.pdf
TROUBLED BRIDGES
AP - The head of the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday people shouldn't fret about general bridge safety across the country, notwithstanding figures showing more than 70,000 are rated structurally deficient. "I don't believe that they should be worried at all," NTSB Chairman Mark Rosenker said from the scene of the collapse this week of an interstate highway bridge in Minneapolis. . .
It is unclear how many of the spans across America pose actual safety risks. Federal officials alerted the states late Thursday to immediately inspect all bridges similar to the Mississippi River span that collapsed. In a separate cost estimate, the Federal Highway Administration has said addressing the backlog of needed bridge repairs would take at least $55 billion. That was five years ago, with expectations of more deficiencies to come. It is money that Congress, the federal government and the states have so far been unable or unwilling to spend. . .
At least 73,533 of 607,363 bridges in the nation, or about 12 percent, were classified as "structurally deficient," including some built as recently as the early 1990s, according to 2006 statistics from the Federal Highway Administration. The federal government provides 80 percent of the money for construction, repair and maintenance of the so-called federal-aid highway system including Interstate highways and bridges. But states set priorities and handle construction and maintenance contracts.
ABC NEWS BLOTTER - 20 heavily trafficked bridges may need to be replaced because they are structurally deficient, according to national bridge inspection data. These bridges scored a lower structural integrity rating than the I-35W bridge in Minnesota before its collapse.
According to the 2006 National Bridge Inventory, the Minnesota bridge received a "50% sufficiency" rating. The Federal Highway Administration says any bridge with a rating of 50 percent or lower is considered "structurally deficient" and "may need to be replaced.". . .
Half of the 20 bridges are located in New Jersey and California, including the famous San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (pictured above).
The New Jersey Route-21 Bridge over the I-80 corridor is the busiest, with more than 518,000 daily commuters and a 49 percent sufficiency rating. The lowest rated bridge is the Raritan River Smith Street Bridge in New Jersey which 208,000 commuters drive across daily. It earned a rating of only 20 percent.
LIST OF DANGEROUS BRIDGES
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/STATELINE - The tragedy highlights a nationwide problem of deteriorating bridges -- as well as roads -- that states and the federal government are struggling to maintain in the face of fast-rising costs of construction and the shrinking value of gasoline taxes. . . It would cost an estimated $9.4 billion a year for 20 years to bring all of the existing bridges up to date, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. . .
Oklahoma has the highest percentage of bridges rated structurally deficient -- 27 percent. More than half of the bridges in Rhode Island and Massachusetts were rated either deficient or obsolete, according to the federal figures.
Bridges are just one piece of the transportation network strained by long-term neglect, a steady increase in the number of drivers, a stagnant source of funding and rampant inflation of road-building costs, according to a March 2007 study by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
The biggest hurdle to improving roads is that federal gasoline taxes, which pay for more than 45 percent of the nation's transportation infrastructure, have not been raised since 1993 and are not even sufficient to cover the spending in the 2005 federal transportation law. . . Federal gas taxes will fall $11 billion short of planned road projects by 2009, but the gap could be as big as $19 billion the following year, AASHTO found. . .
Instead of raising the federal gasoline tax, U.S. Sens. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) introduced a bill, just hours before the Minnesota bridge catastrophe, to create an independent national bank to provide government financing for major infrastructure projects.
http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=229551
HOW TO FUND PUBLIC WORKS
[From Sam Smith's Great American Political Repair Manual, Norton, 1997]
The total federal state, local and private debt in this country in 1996 was around $14 trillion. The actual money supply was just under $6 trillion. So what happened to the rest of the money? Most of it doesn't exist and never did. We call this imaginary money debt. This debt is money that we (as individuals, companies and government) have borrowed, primarily from private sources. As Bob Blain, a professor at Southern Illinois University, put it:
"Most debt is not the result of people borrowing money; it is the result of people not being able to repay what they owed [to banks or individuals] at some earlier time. Instead of declaring them bankrupt, creditors just add more to their debt."
This new debt is called interest. Many people think the idea of the government printing money is shameful, yet our laws permit private financial institutions to create money all the time. Every time you fail to pay off your credit card, you're letting a banker print some more money.You're not the first, of course. For example, when the Congress met in February 1790 to figure out how to pay off the Revolutionary War debt of $75 million, Alexander Hamilton strongly advocated issuing debt certificates and using them as money. Congressman James Jackson of Georgia warned that this would "settle upon our posterity a burden which [citizens] can neither bear nor relieve themselves from.. . . Though our present debt be but a few millions, in the course of a single century it may be multiplied to an extent we dare not think of."
An alternative to Congress borrowing money to pay off its debt would have been to have created the $75 million, using Congress's constitutional power to "coin money and regulate the value thereof." Instead Congress began a long tradition of borrowing the money that -- five trillion dollars of debt later -- many believe we can neither bear nor relieve ourselves from.
In the early 19th century, the little British Channel island of Guernsey faced a smaller but similar problem. Its sea walls were crumbling. its roads were too narrow, and it was already heavily in debt. There was little employment and people were leaving for elsewhere.
Instead of going still further into debt, the island government simply issued 4,000 pounds in state notes to start repairs on the sea walls as well as for other needed public works. More issues followed and twenty years later the island had, in effect, printed nearly 50,000 pounds. Guernsey had more than doubled its money supply without inflation.
A report of the island's States Office in June 1946 notes that island leaders frequently commented that these public works could not have been carried out without the issues, that they had been accomplished without interest costs, and that as a result "the influx of visitors was increased, commerce was stimulated, and the prosperity of the Island vastly improved." By 1943, nearly a half million pounds worth of notes belonged to the public and was so valued that much of it was being hoarded in people's homes, awaiting the island's liberation from the Germans.
About the same time that Guernsey started to fix its sea walls the town of Glasgow, Scotland, borrowed 60,000 pounds to build a fruit market. The Guernsey sea walls were repaid in ten years, the fruit market loan took 139. In the first part of the 20th century, Glasgow paid over a quarter million pounds in interest alone on this ancient project.
How did Guernsey avoid the fiscal disaster that conventional economics prescribed for it? First and foremost by understanding that when you build roads or sea walls or colleges or houses, you are not reducing your society's wealth. In fact, if you do it right, you are creating something that will add to its wealth. The money that was created was simply backed by public works rather than gold or "full faith and credit." It was, in fact, based on something more solid than the dollar bills in our wallets today. In contrast, tacking on an interest charge to public works -- as we do in the US -- creates no new wealth, but merely transfers claims on existing wealth from debtors to creditors.
P.S.It might help if we stopped using the word "infrastructure" and went back to "public works." The growth of the former word curiously coincides with the deterioration of the latter's substance. Could it be that "infrastructure" seemed too remote and academic while "public works" we use every day?
HOW TO DESTROY AN AFRICAN AMERICAN CITY IN 33 STEPS
BILL QUIGLEY, BLACK COMMENTATOR - Step One. Delay. If there is one word that sums up the way to destroy an African-American city after a disaster, that word is DELAY. If you are in doubt about any of the following steps - just remember to delay and you will probably be doing the right thing.
Step Two. When a disaster is coming, do not arrange a public evacuation. Rely only on individual resources. People with cars and money for hotels will leave. The elderly, the disabled and the poor will not be able to leave. Most of those without cars - 25% of households of New Orleans, overwhelmingly African-Americans - will not be able to leave. Most of the working poor, overwhelmingly African-American, will not be able to leave. Many will then permanently accuse the victims who were left behind of creating their own human disaster because of their own poor planning. It is critical to start by having people blame the victims for their own problems.
Step Three. When the disaster hits, make certain the national response is overseen by someone who has no experience at all handling anything on a large scale, particularly disasters. In fact, you can even inject some humor into the response - have the disaster coordinator be someone whose last job was the head of a dancing horse association.
Step Four. Make sure that the President and national leaders remain aloof and only slightly concerned. This sends an important message to the rest of the country.
Step Five. Make certain the local, state, and national governments do not respond in a coordinated, effective way. This will create more chaos on the ground.
Step Six. Do not bring in food or water or communications right away. This will make everyone left behind more frantic and create incredible scenes for the media.
LAWS STARTING TO RESTRICT MCMANSIONS
NICHOLAS RICCARDI, LA TIMES - Eco-friendly Boulder County, Colo., is considering forcing people in some rural areas to pay extra to build homes bigger than 3,000 square feet. Atlantic Beach, Fla., has restricted home size to half the square footage of lots, and the Los Angeles City Council is due to consider a similar measure.
In Minneapolis, reining in big homes was the top issue Betsy Hodges heard about when door-knocking in her successful campaign for City Council in 2005; last month she and the rest of the council unanimously passed a law restricting home size to half the square footage of each lot. . . .
McMansions are an issue mostly in built-out cities or in rural communities where residents hope to preserve a bucolic character, experts say. Traditionally, home size has been regulated by zoning laws that require structures to be set back a certain distance from the property line and permit building only within a "footprint." But as land prices rise and the desire for bigger houses grows, new housing is increasingly "bigfooting" lots and consuming airspace, leading to the rush to set limits. . .
THE CASE FOR FREE TRANSIT
DAVE OLSEN, THE TYEE - Why do we have any barriers to using buses and urban trains? The threat of global warming is no longer in doubt. The hue and cry of the traffic-jammed driver grows louder every commute. And politicians are getting the message. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has ordered his staff to seriously examine the costs of charging people to ride public transit. And Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, recently voiced to a reporter his top dream: "I would have mass transit be given away for nothing and charge an awful lot for bringing an automobile into the city."
Consider this sampling of communities providing free rides on trolleys, buses, trams and ferries: Staten Island, N.Y.; Island County, Wash.; Chapel Hill, N.C.; Vail, Colo.; Logan and Cache Valley, Utah; Clemson, S.C.; Commerce, Calif.; Châteauroux, Vitré, and Compiègne, France; Hasselt, Belgium; Lubben, Germany; Mariehamn, Finland; Nova Gorica, Slovenia; Türi, Estonia; and Övertorneå, Sweden. . .
You have to figure in roads, parking and other infrastructure, tax breaks for car and fuel companies, as well as subsidies for car-carrying ferries and federal income tax reductions and write-offs for companies that use motor vehicles. By some estimates, the government subsidy to each private vehicle owner is about $3,700, while a common cost for providing a single trip by transit is about $5. . .
Done right, fare-free transit can transform society, says Patrick Condon, an expert on sustainable urban development who knows the system in Amherst, Mass. "Free transit changed the region for the better. Students, teens and the elderly were able to move much more freely through the region. Some ascribed the resurgence of Northampton, Mass, at least in part, to the availability of free transit. Fares in that region would have provided such a small percentage of capital and operating costs that their loss was made up for by contributions by the major institutions to benefit: the five colleges in the region," says Condon, a professor at the University of British Columbia.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/57802/
JULY 2007
HOW THE OLYMPICS DAMAGE CITIES
ALTERNET - The toll the Olympic industry takes on host cities is made worse because it's so predictable. Their destructive impact is documented in an extensive study of the seven most recent cities (Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing and London) chosen to host the Summer Games. It was released in June by the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, based in Geneva, Switzerland.
The worst abuses COHRE documents have taken place under the most repressive regimes. Beijing will displace 1.5 million people to host the 2008 Games, as it doubles the already frenzied pace of its urban redevelopment. Often without notice, officials cut off electricity and water to convince residents to leave. If that's unsuccessful, garbage and sewage are allowed to pile up in entryways. Left without recourse, a few residents threatened suicide. Some succeed; others are arrested for creating public disturbances.
Beijing's brutality is hardly unique. COHRE details how South Korea's military dictatorship cleared out 720,000 people for the 1988 Seoul Games. Private security forces roamed the streets at night, using rape, beatings and arson to break community resistance.
But it doesn't take a one-party state to bring out the jackboots when the Olympics come to town. Atlanta gained notoriety among Olympic watchers when it declared the central business district a "sanitized corridor" and had police pre-print arrest citations, with the words "African-American," "Male," and "Homeless" already filled in. In the lead-up to the games the city arrested about 9,000 people, a "crime" that has significant implications because people with criminal records are not eligible for public housing. Some of the homeless were given one-way bus tickets out of town.
What mass-produced arrest citations and bulldozers don't accomplish the market's invisible hand usually does. Real-estate speculation and ballooning rents push out vulnerable populations with inescapable regularity. Barcelona, touted as the most successful recent games, registered a 240 percent increase in new house prices in the run-up to the Olympics.
http://www.alternet.org/stories/56128/
CREATING TRAFFIC SAFETY BY DOING AWAY WITH TRAFFIC LAWS
RADICAL TRUST - The Dutch have a word for "town free of traffic signs" and it's "verkeersbordvrij. . . Removing regulations to increase safety may seem counter-intuitive, but the method is showing that the less restrictions placed on motorists, pedestrians and cyclists, the more responsibility they take upon themselves to behave in a safe manor. And it's working. A pilot project in Oudehaske (Friesland) which started back in the 1980s has resulted in 8000 cars and 2400 cyclists still sharing the road every day with average traffic speeds dropping by 50%.
The program started when Dutch traffic engineer Hans Monderman noted that the town's increasing traffic density would soon become a threat to the villagers' idea of small-town living. . . "The many rules strip us of the most important thing: the ability to be considerate." says Monderman. "We're losing our capacity for socially responsible behavior. The greater the number of proscriptions, the more people's sense of personal responsibility dwindles."
THE DOMING OF AMERICA
DAVE ZIRIN, SF CHRONICLE - "You can't throw money at the problem." As a former public school teacher in Washington, I heard this cliche from countless bureaucrats. It was code for "Stop whining about ancient textbooks and prehistoric classroom materials, because there is no money." Imagine my shock when the city announced it would be spending more than $500 million on a new baseball stadium. Clearly when it comes to the needs of billionaire sports owners, there always seems to be money available to be thrown.
This is hardly a D.C. story. The building of stadiums has become the substitute for anything resembling an urban policy in this country. The stadiums are presented as a microwave-instant solution to the problems of crumbling schools, urban decay and suburban flight.
Stadiums are sporting shrines to the dogma of trickle-down economics. In the past 10 years, more than $16 billion of the public's money has been spent for stadium construction and upkeep from coast to coast. Though some cities are beginning to resist paying the full tab, any kind of subsidy is a fool's investment, ending up being little more than monuments to corporate greed: $500 million welfare hotels for America's billionaires built with funds that could have been spent more wisely on just about anything else.
The era of big government may be over, but it has been replaced by the Rise of the Domes. Reports from both the right-wing Cato Institute and the more centrist Brookings Institution dismiss stadium funding as an utter financial flop, yet the domes keep coming.
Our stadiums, funded on our dime, become the political province of those owners who paid nary a penny for the privilege. In many stadiums, they have started "faith days at the park" where evangelical Christian organizations set up booths and Christian rock gets blared over the loudspeakers. No separation of church and state, even when the state is footing the bill.
Then there is the force-feeding of political dogma. No freedom from that, either. On the orders of George Steinbrenner, the New York Yankees now string up chains along the seats to keep people standing and secured -- and not going to the concessions or bathroom -- for the seventh-inning singing of "God Bless America."
As Neil DeMause, co-author of the book "Field of Schemes" said to me, "The history of the stadium game is the story of how, by slowly refining their blackmail skills, sports owners learned how to turn their industry from one based on selling tickets to one based on extracting public subsidies. It's been a bit like watching a 4-year-old learn how to manipulate his parents into buying him the new toy that he saw on TV; the question now is how long it takes our elected officials to learn to say 'no.' ". . .
Polls show consistent majorities don't want public funds spent on stadiums. That means the silent majority of sports fans oppose the stadium glut as well. We sports fans need to make ourselves heard. We may love baseball. We may love football. We may bleed our team's colors on game day. But that doesn't mean we should have to pay a billionaire millions of dollars for the privilege to watch.
[Dave Zirin is the author of the book, "Welcome to the Terrordome"]
ORDER 'WELCOME TO THE TERRORDOME'
NOW THERE'S BIKE RAGE
MATT VINSER, BOSTON GLOBE - Community leaders who oversee the [Minuteman Bikeway] say its popularity is higher now than in any of the 14 years it's been open, and the Washington-based Rails-to-Trails Conservancy estimates that there are 2 million annual users, making it the second-busiest trail of its kind in the country.
But as thousands each day compete for space on the trail's 12-foot-wide strip of asphalt, passing through meadows, suburban town centers, and manicured backyards, confrontations have become increasingly common. Police have been called out so often to resolve angry, and sometimes bizarre, disputes that they have coined a new term.
"We have road rage," said Arlington Police Chief Fred Ryan. "And now we have bikeway rage." In a 3-mile stretch in Arlington, police have filed 18 reports over the past year -- more than the previous two years combined -- that have ranged from bike-on-bike accidents to a woman who received unwanted sexual advances one afternoon while pushing her baby daughter in a stroller. Some men have been spotted running naked, others urinating in the bushes.
In one instance several years ago, a bicyclist kicked a Jack Russell terrier and yelled at the dog's owner, "Get the [expletive] over to the right!" as he passed by. Police tracked down the bicyclist and, after he apologized to the dog owner, did not press charges.
"It's a good thing that it's used so much," said David Watson, executive director of the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition. "But in some ways I guess you can call it a victim of its own success.". . .
There are cyclists in full-body spandex suits, aerodynamic helmets, and titanium bikes that go fast enough to leave road kill in their wake. There are roller bladers, swaying back and forth to music playing on headphones. There are dog-walkers, stroller-pushers, and frequent choruses of "On your left!" screamed by cyclists as they whiz by pedestrians. . .
WORLD TO BE PLANET OF THE SLUMS
DANIEL HOWDEN, INDEPENDENT, UK - The combined forces of population growth and urbanization are creating a planet of slums, where the urban population will have doubled by 2030, according to a report released by the United Nations today. The shanty towns that choke the cities of Africa and Asia are experiencing unstoppable growth, expanding by more than a million people every week, according to the "state of the world's population" report.
The UN's findings echo recent predictions that 2008 will see a watershed in human history as the balance of the world's population tips from rural to urban. Many of the new urbanites will be poor and the shelters into which they move, or are born, will be slums. . .
Mike Davis, a population expert, described this emerging underclass in his recent work Planet of Slums as: "A billion-strong global proletariat ejected from the formal economy, with Islam and Pentecostalism as songs for the dispossessed." While some critics have accused Mr Davis of scaremongering, the UN's findings appear to back many of his basic assertions. . .
The rise of radical Islam in Africa, from the outskirts of Jakarta to the slums of Egypt, is well documented but the continent is also experiencing a Christian shift, with Pentecostalism winning converts from Uganda to the Democratic Republic of Congo. . .
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2714169.ece
JUN 2007
MAINE TO REQUIRE ECONOMIC IMPACT STATEMENTS FOR BIG BOXES
NEW RULES - The Maine legislature has given its approval to a bill that requires cities and towns to evaluate the economic effects of large-scale retail development and to approve only those projects that will not have an adverse impact on jobs, local businesses, and municipal finances. The legislation is the first of its kind in the nation. . .
In the debate leading up to the vote, Senator John Nutting (D-Androscoggin County) argued that towns needed to more closely examine the effects of large stores on the economy. Referencing research in Maine and other states, Nutting noted that locally owned businesses generate a bigger "economic multiplier" by keeping a much larger share of their revenue in the state's economy. Large retailers, on the other hand, have a "from away, go away" model. "The products are from away and the profits go away," he explained. . .
Attempts to characterize the bill as "anti-business" largely failed because more than 180 small business owners from across the state strongly endorsed the measure in letters to lawmakers. . . Numerous other small business, labor, environmental, and community groups provided crucial support and engaged the help of their members. Thousands of people contacted their representatives. Supportive editorials and op-eds appeared in newspapers around the state.
The Informed Growth Act stipulates that cities conduct an economic impact analysis for proposed stores larger than 75,000 square feet (roughly half the size of a typical Target or Home Depot). The analysis is performed by an independent consultant chosen by the town, but paid for by a fee charged to the developer. It evaluates the effects of the proposed store on existing businesses, jobs, wages, vacancy rates, the cost of municipal services, and the volume of "sales revenue retained and reinvested" in the community.
After the analysis is complete, the town must hold a public hearing. Residents within a certain radius of the proposed store and officials of adjacent municipalities must be given special notice of the hearing. After considering the study's findings and public testimony, the town may approve the store only if it concludes that it would not have an undue adverse impact on the community and local economy.
http://www.newrules.org/retail/news_slug.php?slugid=360STUDY FINDS EMINENT DOMAIN BIASED AGAINST LOW INCOME, MINORITIES
JACOB SULLUM - A new report from the Institute for Justice finds that residents of areas targeted for private economic development projects that rely on eminent domain are poorer, less educated, and less likely to be white than people in surrounding communities. In 184 areas where the use of eminent domain was approved, the median income was about $19,000, 34 percent of adults had less than a high school diploma, and 58 percent of residents were members of minority groups. The corresponding numbers for nearby neighborhoods were $23,000, 45 percent, and 24 percent, respectively.
Such differences are not only not surprising; they are pretty much inevitable if the criterion for condemning a property is whether it can be put to a "higher use" - i.e., one that generates more tax revenue or creates more jobs. As Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted in her dissent from the Supreme Court's endorsement of such takings in Kelo v. New London, "extending the concept of public purpose to encompass any economically beneficial goal guarantees that these losses will fall disproportionately on poor communities." Not to mention the fact that it's easier for developers to force sales when the owners have little political influence and few resources to put up a fight.
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/120920.html
FEET BEAT CARS IN DOWNTOWN PHILLY URBAN CAR FREE ZONES SPREADING
DANIEL B WOOD, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR - Every Saturday starting May 26 through Sept. 30, bicyclists, joggers, and pedestrians will have free rein on almost a mile of John F. Kennedy Drive, the main drag through Golden Gate Park. The usual denizens of the road - autos - will be banned, detoured elsewhere. . . The auto's demotion at Golden Gate Park follows dozens of similar moves in at least 20 American cities in the past three years. It's a trend that is gaining ground rapidly in the US, say urban planners.
- New York is proposing to shut down perimeter roads of Central Park and Brooklyn's Prospect Park all summer long.
- Atlanta plans to transform 53 acres of blighted, unused land into new bike-friendly green space.
- Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, and El Paso, Texas, are planning events to promote car-free days in public parks, most in the hope that the idea will become permanent or extend for months.
"Cities across America are increasingly declaring that parks are for people, not cars, ... and closing roads within parks is one result of that," says Ben Welle with The Trust for Public Land's Center for City Park Excellence, in Washington.
Resistance can be fierce at first, he and others say, because of worries about traffic congestion, parking problems, and loss of visitors for businesses and museums. But studies are showing that traffic problems can be minimized, shops and museums get more visitors, and residents begin to cherish their where-the-action-is location.
Not everyone is convinced, saying the jury is still out on how no-car zones affect neighborhood vitality. In San Francisco, for instance, the de Young Museum has said its delivery schedule must be adjusted because of the new road closure, and it is concerned that patrons with physical disabilities may not be able to get to the museum as readily.
The model city for road closure is Bogota, Colombia, which in 1983 embarked on a program called ciclovia (bike path), in which designated streets were closed to cars every Sunday but open for jogging, biking, dancing, playing ball, walking pets, strolling with babies - anything but driving. One-and-a-half million people now turn out each week for ciclovia. Other cities in Latin America followed suit, closing parts of parks or whole urban districts to cars - some intermittently, some permanently. A result: revitalized neighborhoods and an influx of people.
Smaller US cities, from Davenport, Iowa, to Huntington Beach, Calif., are also starting to create car-free zones, according to Mr. Welle's studies.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0502/p01s03-ussc.htm
FREIBURG'S WALKABLE NEIGHBORHOOD
CHRISTEL KUCHARZ, ABC - Welcome to Quartier Vauban -- a new 2,000-home development on a piece of land formerly used by French military in the medieval town of Freiburg, Germany. It has been the country's ecological capital since the first anti-nuclear, pro-environment movements in the early 1970s. . . Cars are kept on the outskirts of the living quarters, so the narrow streets become playgrounds for the kids and spaces for public interaction. Most of the residents don't even own cars. Those who have a car must buy space in a garage located about a five-minute walk away, and at $25,000 the space does not come cheap.
"Schools, kindergartens, a farmer's market, a shopping center, a good store which sells organic products only, and a recreation area -- you name it, it's all in walking or cycling distance," resident Sabine Burgermeister said. "And it's a much better quality of life here than it is in downtown Freiburg. And if we need to go there, there's always the option to take the tramway."
The free tramway passes generously provided by the city of Freiburg are helping residents of Vauban to become less car-dependent and, if need be, there's also a perfect car sharing service available for those who occasionally do need a car.
The city of Freiburg itself has taken quite a few steps toward a healthier environment for its 215,000 residents. It made its medieval town center more pedestrian-friendly, laid down a lattice of bike paths and introduced a flat rate for tramways and buses. And many residents say they prefer the public transportations system over driving into town.
http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=3234523
WEST VIRGINIA'S PERSONAL RAPID TRANSIT
JOE GRATA, PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE Like the "Energizer Bunny," West Virginia University's PRT is an icon that keeps on going. And going. PRT stands for Personal Rapid Transit, a one-of-a-kind, computer-run, electric people mover system whose 73 gold-and-blue transit cars have been whisking riders around hilly Morgantown and the school complex since 1975.
"There are 130 automated systems worldwide, but only one like this," said Lawrence Fabian of Boston, director of the Advanced Transit Association, which deals with futuristic transit programs. "Its characteristics are unique," including on-demand service that takes riders where they want to go, like pressing the buttons on an elevator except that it's a horizontal trip with five stations instead of five floors.
The PRT is so "personal" that fairly often there's only one passenger aboard an 8,600-pound car, moving at speeds up to 30 mph from Point A to Point C without stopping at Point B.
The former Urban Mass Transportation Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation, funded development and construction of the PRT in the 1970s, wanting to test the technology in an environment of changing weather and challenging topography.
Often maligned in its infancy as a goofy, unworkable idea and then plagued by technical and operating maladies in childhood, the people mover overcame the stigmas and problems long ago.
The PRT has racked up 20 million miles and carried 60 million riders over three decades. The safety record is impressive. No one has ever been badly hurt on the vehicles, electrified guideway or stations.
A transportation magazine, "The New Electric Railway Journal," has ranked the system above Disney World's Monorail for overall performance.
http://www.postgazette.com/pg/07149/789706-147.stm
CHAIN STORES FOUND TO OFFER ONLY 60% THE ECONOMIC BENEFIT TO COMMUNITY OF LOCALLY OWNED BUSINESSES
NEW RULES - While many parts of the country are overrun with chain stores, San Francisco remains a stronghold for locally owned businesses, according to a new study, which also found that those local stores generate sizable benefits for the city's economy. The San Francisco Locally Owned Merchants Association, one of the sponsors of the study, hopes it will spur residents to choose locally owned businesses more often and encourage cities in the region to re - examine policies that favor chains.
The study calculated the market share of independents and chains in several categories: bookstores, sporting goods stores, toy stores, and casual dining restaurants.
In all four categories, the study found that independents capture a much larger share of consumer spending in the region than they do nationwide. Locally owned bookstores in the San Francisco area, for example, capture about 55 percent of book sales. Internet retailers account for 19 percent of the market and chain bookstores, including Borders and Barnes & Noble, have about 15 percent. Nationally, independent bookstores account for just 10 percent of book sales.
Independent sporting goods stores in the San Francisco area likewise capture 56 percent of sales in that category, while independent restaurants have almost two - thirds of the casual dining market. Locally owned toy stores account for 44 percent of toy sales, while specialty toy chains, general merchants like Target, and internet retailers capture the rest.
Local bookstores accounted for less than 12 percent of book sales in the suburbs. Independent toy stores fared even worse with just 3 percent of the suburban market.
The second part of the study finds that $1 million spent at independent bookstores creates $321,000 in additional economic activity in the region, including $119,000 in wages and salaries paid to local employees. That same $1 million spent at chain bookstores generates only $188,000 in local economic activity, including $71,000 in local wages and salaries.
Much of the difference in economic impact is due to two factors. One is that the chains have some of their management, marketing, and other functions carried out at corporate headquarters and therefore employ fewer people locally per unit of sales. In the toy category, for example, for every $1 million in sales, independent stores create 2.22 local jobs, while chains create just 1.31.
The other factor is that the local retailers spend more of their revenue buying goods and services at local businesses such as print shops, accounting firms, web design companies, banks, and so forth. Chains have little need for these local goods and services; many of the dollars that flow into their outlets instead leave the region.
A 10 percent shift in spending from local stores to chains would deprive the community of $192 million in economic activity and put almost 1,300 people out of work. Locally owned businesses in San Francisco have been losing ground to chains, as they have in the rest of the country, for more than two decades. Continuation of this trend would further harm the city's economy.
http://www.newrules.org/retail/news_slug.php?slugid=358
MAY 2007
CHARLOTTESVILLE VA CONSIDERS ENDING TRANSIT FARES
USA TODAY - Charlottesville, home of the University of Virginia, is poised to earn another distinction: It's considering joining a handful of cities in the USA that have eliminated transit fares in hopes of spurring ridership on public transportation and relieving congestion. . . Charlottesville Transit Service is a small urban system that records about 1.45 million passenger trips a year, says Charles Petty, program coordinator for the city's transit division.
A much larger transit system also is looking at the idea. San Francisco's transit agency handles about 700,000 passenger trips a day. In March, Mayor Gavin Newsom asked the Municipal Transportation Agency to study eliminating fares on city buses, streetcars and cable cars. If it does so, it would become the only major transit agency in the nation with a systemwide fare-free policy.
Agency spokeswoman Maggie Lynch says the system is already at or near capacity, but the agency is considering the mayor's request.
Many major transit systems offer free travel in their downtown business districts. But it would be difficult for large transit agencies to implement a systemwide fare-free policy because they get up to 30% of revenue from the fare box and demand could overwhelm capacity, says Anthony Kouneski, vice president of member services at the American Public Transportation Association.
A 2002 study by University of South Florida's Center for Urban Transportation Research concluded that "a fare-free policy might work for smaller transit systems but is ill-advised for larger transit systems." The report said free fares on large urban systems caused surges in ridership and higher maintenance and labor costs and drove away existing riders.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-05-28-nofares_N.htm
BUS RAPID TRANSIT REMAINS AN ORPHAN THANKS TO RAIL LOBBY
[We recommended bus rapid transit as one alternative when DC's hyper expensive Metro was being planned. Besides being the second biggest public works cost overrun in American history, Metro failed to deal effectively with Washington's transportation problem and actually encouraged urban sprawl]
JEFF NESMITH, COX NEWS SERVICE - Advocates of "bus rapid transit" say the country is wasting billions of dollars to build glitzy urban rail systems when people can travel more cheaply and with less environmental impact by bus. Bus rapid transit, or BRT, should not be confused with traditional urban bus systems, its most fervent advocates point out.
Instead of those smoky old mechanical dinosaurs that toil from stop to stop, BRT buses whiz along dedicated roadways, pausing briefly at stations where passengers quickly get on and off without having to pause and feed the driver's coin box. New showcase systems in Los Angeles; Adelaide, Australia; Bogota, Colombia and other cities have been received enthusiastically by commuters. In fact, Bogota's Transmileno is so popular that the mayor who built it, Enrique Penalosa, is often mentioned as a candidate for president.
But in Washington, BRT proponents say they are being out - lobbied. In a report to Congress in February, the Federal Transit Administration said it planned to issue grants worth $18.2 billion to help build rail projects during fiscal 2008, and about $1.4 billion for BRT projects. . .
"The reason the federal government invests in rapid transit in the first place is that it gets people out of their cars," said William Vincent, a former Transportation Department official who is now general counsel of the Breakthrough Technologies Institute, a Washington - based environmental advocacy group.
"You cut down on greenhouse gases. You reduce oil consumption," Vincent said. "You can get the same number of people out of their cars for about one - quarter the cost with a BRT."
According to the institute's calculations, BRT can move commuters with less than a third of the carbon dioxide emissions of light rail, and one - sixth those of private cars.
Vincent said he found the annual operating cost for a rail system was about $933 per average weekday boarding.
That means if an average of 1,000 people board a system each weekday, the annual operating cost would be $933,000.
The average for BRT was less than half as much, $445.
Capital costs for rapid transit systems vary widely. For example, Boston's new Silver Line, a BRT that runs from South Station to Logan Airport, is costing more than $800 million per mile, Vincent said, and New York's Second Avenue Subway will cost $2 billion per mile. But on average, he said, capital costs for the rail plans run $240 million per mile, compared with $66 million for BRTs.
MAYOR OF LONDON DELIGHTED WITH CONGESTION CHARGES
KEN LIVINGSTONE, MAYOR, LONDON - The facts about London's congestion charging scheme are clear. It cut the amount of traffic entering central London by 20%. Each day in 2006, there are were almost 70,000 fewer vehicles entering the charging zone compared to the number that had been entering each day before charging began.
The figures following the extension of the zone westwards show that it is also operating at the expected level. Traffic in the area of the western extension of the zone is down 13%. . .
In addition, road safety has improved, CO2 emissions have been cut, and congestion charging contributed to the growth of cycling with more people than ever before traveling by bike - a 72% increase in the number of cyclists on the capital's major roads since 2000.
Naturally, all these benefits were not only brought by congestion charging itself but by the public transport measures that accompanied it. Bus ridership in London has risen by 2 million a day, and the city has embarked on the largest program of public investment in transport for 50 years. Doubtless, New York will be looking at implications for public transport in the city.
Finally, New York's decision has another implication. It is a final nail in the coffin of the claim by rightwing pressure groups and anti-environmentalists that policies being pursued in London are against the interests of its economy - for the one thing that cannot be claimed against New York is that it is an anti-business city.
In reality, of course, the evidence was already in. Retail sales in central London are far outperforming those in the rest of the country. The West End theatre trade is strong. Tourism is growing strongly. Congestion charging has achieved exactly what it was designed to do - not cut the number of journeys, but shift them from private cars to public transport. It has cut congestion, and cut environmental damage, with the economy continuing to boom.
The next proposed step for the congestion charge is to increase its benefits by enhancing its ability to tackle climate change. This would see the introduction of a L25 charge for cars responsible for the highest CO2 emissions, with reduced charges for cars with lower-than-average emissions, and the greenest cars would pay nothing.
MARCH 2007
CITIES INSTITUTIONALIZE CRUELTY
EMILY BAZAR, USA TODAY - Cities are cracking down on charities that feed the homeless, adopting rules that restrict food giveaways to certain locations, require charities to get permits or limit the number of free meals they can provide. Orlando, Dallas, Las Vegas and Wilmington, N.C., began enforcing such laws last year. Some are being challenged.
Last November, a federal judge blocked the Las Vegas law banning food giveaways to the poor in city parks. In Dallas, two ministries are suing, arguing that the law violates religious freedom. . .
HIGHEST TRANSIT RIDERSHIP IN HALF A CENTURY
USA TODAY - Ridership on public transportation jumped to the highest level in nearly five decades in 2006 as high gas prices and expanded bus and train service enticed people to park their cars. More than 10 billion trips were taken on buses and rail lines last year, the American Public Transportation Association says in a report to be released today. That's up 2.9% from 2005 and the highest level since 1957. Ridership rose three consecutive years through 2006 and increased 28% in the 10 years since 1996. . .
FEBRUARY 2007
WHY URBAN TRANSIT WORKS. . .AND BUILDING MORE ROADS DOESN'T
RICHARD LAYMAN, URBAN PLACES AND SPACES - In one hour, one road-mile of road-lane can accommodate about 2,000 cars on a limited access freeway, and from 800 to 1,300 cars in various non-freeway situations.
The same lane mile can accommodate 6,750 people riding buses, 10,000 people riding bus rapid transit, a minimum of 15,000 people riding light rail, and up to 65,000 people in heavy rail (subway).
The average suburban household makes 15 trips per day, most by automobile, with limited numbers of additional passengers during each trip. . .
In a city like San Francisco, as many as 60% of daily trips to the Central Business District occur on transit. In Washington, upwards of 700,000 riders take the subway, and about 500,000 additional riders use buses.
In the City of Washington, approximately 40% of resident households do not own cars. (I don't know what the numbers are for Arlington County, but they are probably similarly positive.)
Residents of the City of Washington and Arlington County, Virginia have commuting times at or about the national average, while residents in the other counties in the Washington region have commuting times significantly higher than the national average.
It's reasonable to assume that this occurs in part because in the region, Washington and Arlington enjoy the richest set of non-automobile based transportation and mobility assets--plus in many areas, walkable communities. . .
And while road capacity cannot (for the most part) be increased in a traditional center city, there are many opportunities to increase the capacity and efficiency of the transit and transportation "system".
ALSO: For every 10% increase in road miles, there is a 9% increase in vehicle miles traveled.
BILL BLEYER, NEWSDAY - The area of Long Island that would become synonymous with suburbia was farmland on the edge of the Hempstead Plains until William J. Levitt arrived in 1947 to build the development that shares his surname. Levitt, then 40, broke ground for the first of the 17,000 homes that would pop up on 1,000 acres of potato farms 15 miles east of New York City on July 1, 1947. He earned his nickname as "the Henry Ford of Housing" by building fast, using mass-production techniques. By breaking down the construction process into 27 operations done by specialized teams, Levitt could sell houses for between $8,000 and $12,000 and still make a $1,000 profit.
To mark the 60th anniversary of the birth of Levittown, the Long Island Museum of American Art, History & Carriages in Stony Brook has assembled what it is calling the the most comprehensive exhibit ever done on the landmark affordable housing development and its creator. . .
Levittown and the suburban sprawl it ushered in was the product of almost two decades of repressed home-building and baby-rearing during the Great Depression and World War II. When the GIs came home in 1945, they wanted to start families and have a place for their families to live. . .
The first government-supported housing program for working-class Americans allowed the vets to buy starter houses with low-interest mortgages with little money down where before they would have remained
high school-educated renters. . .But there was also a downside. Thanks to Levittown and other similar developments, rapid growth combined with limited or nonexistent zoning controls led to sprawl and, by some standards, unimaginative cookie-cutter subdivisions that bred highways and shopping malls and congealing traffic.
And even some of the vets with GI Bill money could not obtain a starter home. When Levittown opened Oct. 1, 1947, the rental and purchase contracts - one is displayed in the Stony Brook exhibit - contained the now infamous Clause 25: "The tenant agrees not to permit the premises to be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race."
Levitt explained the policy to The Saturday Evening Post in 1954: "If we sell one house to a Negro family, then 90 to 95 percent of our white customers will not buy into the community. That is their attitude, not ours. We did not create it and we cannot cure it. As a company, our position is simply this: we can solve a housing problem or we can try to solve a racial problem. But we cannot combine the two."
While blacks were fighting to get into Levittown, others who made it weren't always thrilled. The exhibit includes three sarcastic comic strip panels loaned by Bill Griffith, a nationally syndicated cartoonist who does Zippy the Pinhead cartoons and who grew up in Levittown. He didn't like the uniformity or conformity, as his cartoons make very clear. . .
After preparing the exhibit, Ruff said he came to new conclusions about Levitt and his development. "He's one of these extraordinary, complicated historical figures, like a Robert Moses, who changes the scope of the landscape but has both his foibles and his positive side. He was an amazing philanthropist, but everybody knows about his downfall." In 1968, Levitt & Sons was sold to ITT Corp. for $92 million in stock. Levitt used the stock as collateral to build subdivisions in other countries, in locations such as Iran, Venezuela and Nigeria, but the stock tanked, the projects failed and Levitt ended up millions of dollars in debt. He died in 1994.
JANUARY 2007
How to reuse abandoned urban rail lines MAKING HOUSING ACCESSIBLE TO ELDERS
GOVERNING - In Fairfax County, home to more than 100,000 older adults, the Board of Supervisors has been studying . . . how to adapt current housing to meet the changing needs of aging residents, and how to design new homes that are built without barriers. Sometimes referred to as "Peter Pan" housing, much of the housing in the county is built as though residents will never grow old or never need to house an aging relative. Features such as entry stairs, narrow doorways or lack of a first-floor bathroom can be major barriers for an older person or someone with a physical disability. "People want to grow older gracefully - in their own homes," observed Gerald E. Connolly, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors. "What if we built it right in the first place?"
"Visit-ability should be the starting point for new construction," said Lee District Supervisor Dana Kauffman. "What does it take? A no-step entrance, an accessible place where family and friends can gather, and a main floor bathroom that can be used by people who have mobility impairments. It is much cheaper to build it right than to have to retrofit it later."
Retrofitting a home may be costly, but according to Al McAloon, the Lee District appointee to the Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board, "Adding an elevator in a home is still cheaper than the first-year cost of assisted living.". . .
County staff have been directed to:
- Review current building codes and develop ways to educate architects, builders and future homeowners about how to build homes that can be adapted as needs change.
- Look at ways to increase homeowner or renter financing options for retrofitting homes, and to streamline the application processes for currently available financing options.
- Identify legislative changes that may be needed to increase the availability of older adult-friendly housing.
http://governing.typepad.com/13thfloor/2007/01/and_tinkerbell_.html
http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/news/2007/010.htm
LA TIMES, 2005 - The one-level ranch home, that stalwart of Western living, is being replaced by row after row of closely packed multistory dwellings. Single-story architecture sits right at the confluence of two trends driving the home-building industry: consumer demand for bigger homes and the increasing price of open land. The near-disappearance of the single-level style in new construction is a milestone in regional land use -- a deviation from decades of building that emphasized one-story homes. And one that seems ironic as the large baby boomer population is aging and more likely to be seeking out places without stairs. About 55% of all new single-family homes in the U.S. had two or more stories in 2004, up from 30% in 1978, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.
NEW USES FOR ALLEYS
JONATHAN ROWE, ON THE COMMONS - Now comes word from Baltimore, where inner city neighbors are starting to close off alleys and turn them into protected commons for socializing and children's play. The move is a commonsense answer to a number of problems that many city dwellers face. They don't know their neighbors. They feel confined in their apartments. Their children lack safe places in which to play. Crime flourishes in the social void. All these things help drive people to the suburbs, which worsens sprawl, traffic and the rest.
All of them moreover are related in some degree to the grid that consigns us to small and separate spaces. But wait a minute, look out back. There's an alley there, running right down the middle of the interior of the block. Probably it is a mess: trash, rats, carcasses of old washing machines and even cars. Drug dealers hang out there; junkies shoot up. It's not a place you like to spend much time.
But it's space. What if you could fix it up, even turn it into a park? What if neighbors lowered their back fences, opened up their yards to the new shared space? What if they put gates at the ends, with locks, so that children could play safely and neighbors could plant gardens and install benches without worries about intruders? Then, what if people on the block actually gave a portion of their backyards to the new commons to make it bigger. Each one would lose a little. But together they would gain so much.
In fact there are projects along this line in numerous cities around the country. In Baltimore, the idea took hold on a block in the Patterson Park neighborhood. With help from Community Greens, a project of the Ashoka Foundation, residents there got permission from the city to gate the alley. Then they cleaned it up, installed painted planters, and held a big block party. They haven't widened the space yet or turned it into a park but they are talking about it. Some residents have lowered their fences so they actually can see their neighbors and talk with them. . .
On Stanton Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side there is a low income project that was designed with help from people the community. They scrapped the typical project model of structures set on an exposed landscape, and opted instead for one flush to the sidewalk with an enclosed inner courtyard. Children actually have a safe place to play, in a neighborhood that not that long ago was a drug combat zone. The apartments are designed so that parents can watch their children from the kitchen window, and even from the laundry room. . .
Even in Baltimore there have been charges of elitism and exclusivity. How can it be a commons if it is not open to everyone? Those alleys are city property after all. The question goes to the very nature of a commons ­ a finite, land-based one at least. (Infinite commons, such as language, knowledge, and the internet are different in this regard.) Finite commons must have rules of access; and historically, this access usually has been defined locally.
You couldn't just show up in Boston with a cow in colonial days and expect to graze it on the Boston Common. The Common was for residents of Boston. It was common to a defined group and exclusive to others. This is how most commons have worked; and it is why the "tragedy of the commons" thesis is a canard, as the author, Garret Hardin, came to see late in his life. The tragedy thesis assumes no rules of access; which means that it assumes away history. As E.F. Thompson, the historian, once put it, commoners "have not been so lacking in common sense."
http://onthecommons.org/node/1067/print
LEWIS MUMFORD, THE CITY IN HISTORY - If the layout of a town has no relation to human needs and activities other than business, the pattern of the city may be simplified: the ideal layout for the business man is that which can be most swiftly reduced to standard monetary units for purchase and sale. The fundamental unit is no longer the neighborhood or the precinct, but the individual building lot, whose value can be gauged in terms of front feet. . .
Such plans fitted nothing but a quick parceling of the land, a quick conversion of farmsteads into real estate, and a quick sale. The very absence of more specific adaptations to landscape or to human purpose only increased, by its very indefiniteness and designlessness, its general usefulness for exchange. Urban land, too, became now became a mere commodity, like labor: its market value expressed its only value. Being conceived as a purely physical agglomeration of rentable buildings, the town planned on these lines could sprawl in any direction, limited only by gross physical obstacles and the need for rapid public transportation. Every street might become a traffic street; every section might become a business section.
METRO AREAS WHERE POVERTY IS INCREASING
NATION'S MOST DRUG INFESTED CITY
SAFER THAN ITS MOST POLICED CITYSince San Francisco is the city with the greatest illicit drug use and DC is one of those with the least (but the most cops), we thought we'd check and see how the war on drugs was keeping us safe. Turns out that in 5 of 7 categories of crime - including all categories of violent crime - it was safer to be living around those awful Frisco druggies. [ Area Connect chart ]
STUNNING STAT OF THE DAY
[Buried five paragraphs into a story about French homelessness. 86,000 is larger than the city of Portland, Maine]
AP - Given France's well-financed social services, the country's homeless problem is relatively mild - the national statistics bureau estimated the number of people living without a fixed address on any one night at 86,000 for all of France in 2004, about equal to the number of homeless in Los Angeles alone.
JANUARY 2006
LIGHT RAIL RETURNS TO PARIS
STEFAN SIMONS, SPEIGEL - The last Paris tram ground to a halt 60 years ago. Now a new tram line is being introduced with lots of fanfare. France hopes this return to the past will ring in a new era of urban mobility. The tram is quiet, fast and comfortable -- a perfect remedy for traffic jams. . . The new tram signals a change of direction in French public transportation policy -- not just in Paris -- and it may even represent a shift in urban-planning ideas around the world. . .
Arriving every four minutes, the tram will move along the so-called Marechaux, boulevards named after famous generals that gird Paris like a belt -- or strangle it, as residents suffering from excessive car traffic, pollution and noise complain.
The tram is meant to offer relief. The elegant green and white cars will carry almost twice as many commuters every day as local buses -- some 100,000 people. The strips of grass and the reduction in car traffic should improve the quality of life for residents. . .
Broad walkways and bicycle routes, parks with thousands of specially planted trees, and city-commissioned art works all belong to the package. They help turn the new tram line into a showcase for urban progress. "Here we've converted a main artery of automobile traffic to a place of life and a promenade," one of the mayor's assistants explains. . .
The return to collective forms of urban transportation started with rising energy costs and with the car-traffic crisis in inner cities. Eight French cities participated in a government project aimed at bringing new, modern transportation technology to the city centers. After Nantes, it's mainly Strasbourg that has begun to expand its tram network as part of a larger urban vision. The windowed, streamlined coaches, which not only hold plenty of passengers but are also quiet and comfortable, have become a showcase for up-to-date and ecologically correct transportation policies.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,454517,00.html
WHY LIGHT RAIL WORKS
AS WASHINGTON was building its hyper-expensive subway - Big Dig Junior - your editor was a lonely voice calling for a return of light rail. At the time, for what it cost to build a hundred miles of subway, Washington could have had 1,000 of light rail.
Light rail offers a number of important advantages other than cost:
- It directly competed for space with the automobile. Because it was underground, the subway mainly competed with pre-existing bus service.
- It encouraged integrated communities rather than nodes of development at subway stops. The subway has actually increased street traffic by leading to new development for which it only met a minority of commuting needs.
- It preserved a round-the-clock city rather than making it more easily accessible during working hours to ever more distant suburbanites. It is an irony of the subway is that it encouraged much of what the "smart growth" crowd now complains about.
DECEMBER 2006
THE DECLINE OF MIDDLE CLASS NEIGHBORHOODS
DUTCH CITY REMOVES TRAFFIC LIGHTS, INCREASES SAFETY
BALTIMORE'S ARABBERS
BALTIMORE STORIES - Arabbers, also known as hucksters and entrepreneurs, are usually black males. An African-American tradition, arabbing was one of the few jobs that were available for African-Americans for a long time. It is the term for horse-cart vending - a tradition that has been halted in Philadelphia and New York City. Government officials and animal rights activists who don't want to see horses on the city streets have ceased arabbing in those cities.
Despite the small number, the arabbers who are active still make the best of their jobs and take pride in what they do. The wagons are painted bright red and yellow and the horses are adorned with "Baltimore harnesses."
"They have special harnesses called Baltimore harnesses that are black with gold trim and bone rings, which are white plastic rings. They also have red tassels and red plume with bell drops," Dan Van Allen, President of the Arabber Preservation Society said. . .
"They have hollers like most street vendors-every guy has a different holler," Van Allen said. The hollers are actually are more like songs. The vendors make it musical to draw attention and to help preserve their voice. Instead of yelling all the produce they have, they make it into a musical melody. They often advertise their produce by listing the items in song. The songs vary from person to person, but generally list their best produce items, especially out of season produce. . .
Often called "a market on wheels" the horse-drawn carts contain produce items such as fruits and vegetables. The arabbers stroll through the neighborhoods of the city providing a delivery service of produce and other items. For most residents this is a blessing, as there are few supermarkets located in the city. . . "They buy their produce from a wholesale market out in Jessup and divide it amongst the arabbers," Van Allen said. "At one time they were selling wood and ice, and they've sold crabs and fish on the wagons. I've even seen wagons with scrap metal," he added.
http://baltimorestories.com
