Tag

Cities

Mar 28
0

Zoning Laws Outlaw Peanut Butter

By | Homelessness, The Race to End Homelessness | 6 Comments

I have a friend who raves about the fried peanut butter and jelly you can order at Rocket to Venus in Hampden. I’m sure she’ll get me to try it one day, but I have a hard time believing they have improved on my life-long favorite sandwich.

Because they are cheap, easily assembled and, (in my opinion), delicious, PB & Js are the favorite sandwich of volunteer groups passing out food to homeless people. If you don’t share my personal tastes, peanut butter and jelly could get boring. While everyone deserves variety, sometimes food is food, and when you’re hungry, a solid sandwich can be a big help.

Notice I said “when you’re hungry,” not “when you’re experiencing homelessness.” Most groups that pass out food in public places don’t care if the recipients are homeless, because they know that hunger affects people even after they get housing. That is why volunteers in Raleigh, North Carolina were so surprised last summer when they were told they could not pass out hot breakfast to the line of individuals that has come to expect their presence on weekday mornings. The group, called Love Wins Ministries, arrives weekly with breakfast sandwiches and a vat off coffee, but in August 2013 they were stopped by Raleigh police and threatened with arrest before they could serve.

Raleigh is not the only city letting its hungry residents stay that way. You may remember the less-than- hospitable town of Columbia, South Carolina that was working this winter to outlaw homelessness. As of February 15th, the area has taken further steps to alienate its already marginalized population, by requiring that any group planning to distribute obtain a permit (costing around $120) to serve meals in any public park or open space. This discourages volunteer groups that are not run by a registered nonprofit from providing food. In Rockford, Illinois, both food and shelter have been interrupted at Apostolic Pentecostal Church. Last week, church officials were informed they would be acting outside the law if they continued to use the empty church building as a shelter and warming station for homeless individuals.

Law enforcement in each of these cities and towns cite zoning or permit regulations as the reason for the recent interruptions, but there has to be a way to have a city that can feed its homeless population without it being deemed a fire hazard or an illegal act. Homelessness won’t end with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but if we can’t even serve this simple snack, what hope is there for a large scale, system change to end homelessness? These jurisdictions must find a way to prioritize human needs, and work with groups that are trying to help, not against their efforts.

Hélder Câmara, a 1980’s Brazilian Archbishop once explained, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” Today, feeding the poor might earn him handcuffs, not sainthood. As neither a saint nor a communist myself, I still think it is important to ask why so many cities demand people living in poverty navigate legal hurdles in order to obtain a warm bed or a snack – and I wonder how we can improve upon this practice. 

Apr 28
0

From Sprawl to City

By | The Good Plan | One Comment

These places we call ‘cities’ are evolutions. Before bicycle lanes and green roofs, cities were a collection of cars and soot and dense, dense housing. It really wasn’t that long ago we decided to clean up this density and reform it into a desirable place to be. After reading Joel Kotkins’ opinion that urban sprawl defines the next future city, I can’t help but agree — for the most part.

The cities of the 1980’s were realms where infrastructure existed and where people lived and worked around inconvenience. These dense, dirty cities were our city 1.0. They were conglomerates of action before organization. We left the 1.0 when we started to care about polar bears and recycling. We took this existing mess of people and started to turn it into a functional pattern of streetscapes and movement, ultimately moving from City 1.0 to City 2.0 — where integrated public spaces and programmed parks and living walls made us happy. The City 2.0 is an intentional city — the spaces purposefully designed in a way that satisfies the resident.

Before our obsession with walkability and functional public transit, the white picket fence and the backyard were indicative of the American Dream. Those who could afford to, fled the 1.0 and set up their own hubs of cookie cutter homes and strip malls. These suburbs were rich in infrastructure and relocated businesses — anxious to take advantage of affordable rent and spatial flexibility. The suburbs were hubs for people who had money and owned cars, and while urban planners may hate the big box store and the Pleasantville housing developments, these places were primed for the next evolution in space creation. The people are there, so at some point — they’ll demand that same purposeful planning, or so I imagine.

Houston, Charlotte and Phoenix — the three cities identified by Kotkins as our ‘future cities’ — are really just cities in transition, or in the calm before the storm. They’ve acquired the mass of people and have turned into destinations, but I would imagine there will be a continued push by city residents for the same amenities and qualities of convenience that exist in Boston, Chicago or San Francisco. The elements of a good city — including transit, local food, high air quality, and walkable access to amenities are attractive to the younger generation, who are the source of employment and new investment dollars. At some point, I would presume the masses of these sprawled cities will not want to drive everywhere they need to go.

We don’t often get the opportunity to watch a new city being built, but we do have an example from which we can work. Tony Hsieh is rebuilding Las Vegas idea by idea, to a 2.0. Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos, and in the spirit of desired collaboration and enhanced communication, he relocated his business to Nevada. In addition, he committed millions of dollars into city planning — placemaking both physically and culturally. By creating spaces for chance meetings, keeping people on street level, and encouraging residents to sell their cars, Hsieh is said to be creating the city as a start-up and encouraging a work-live-play urban area.

Hsieh is bringing the people, now its just creating a place for all of them to be happy. He is, in essence, compounding the sprawl into a sustainable urban living experience. Most recently Fast Company produced an article on Project 100 — Hsieh’s latest attempt to create the ideal. In Project 100, members pay $400 per month in exchange for a car service, access to one of 100 car shares, 1 of 100 bikes, and use of 100 shuttle buses with 100 stops around he city. As we watch Las Vegas go through the necessary transformations to make it one of the more evolved urban areas, we can watch sprawl dissipate into consolidated prosperity. As they exist today, the suburbs are not going to be acceptable as the new city, but they most certainly act as a template primed for investment.

Waiting for Change

IMAGE CREDIT. Prekons
Apr 19
0

Lindsey Fisks LIVABILITY

By | The Good Plan | No Comments

ChangeEngine’s irrepressible blogger on all things urban, Lindsey Davis of The Good Plan, got a shout-out today from the good people over at Livability — an online hub for cities that punch above their weight — in their weekly round-up of all ideas spiky and intriguing. When alerted to this fact, Lindsey went into what might be described as paroxysms of enthusiastic analysis, producing a set of pithy, punchy, point-by-point responses that bears an uncanny resemblance to Fisking. (“Ooo new word!” says Lindsey.)

So, as a kind of capper of our own on the week, we present Lindsey’s rapid-fire reactions to Livability’s weekly round-up, with a focus on demographer Joel Kotkin’s provocative suggestion that the suburbs, not San Francisco, might be the template for the future of the American city:

“Could urban sprawl be the best indicator or future city growth? Many urban planning theorists prescribe the idea of high density and central cores as the best way for cities to grow…”

-High density and central cores are the “Best way for cities to grow”? No! Smart development of high density and central cores are the best way for cities to grow.

“…but then there’s Joel Kotkin, a demographer who says data shows legacy cities are a model of the past and that the cities of the future will resemble those experiencing more outward growth.”

-Legacy cities are a model of the past and the future will resemble outward growth. Shocker. So alternately, legacy cities would be forgotten, we’d start ALL over in some field somewhere, build brand new infrastructure? Well, yes. Legacy cities are a model of the past YET A FOUNDATION FOR OUR FUTURE DEVELOPMENT BECAUSE HALF THE WORK IS ALREADY DONE. And yes, we’ll have to move out. We certainly can’t keep going up. Unless you live in Hawaii that is.

“Are Sprawling Urban Regions The Next Great Cities?”

-Are sprawled regions the next great cities? I mean, what’s the alternative here. Something has to be ‘new’ and ‘next.’ If we’re making ‘new’ cities I would think we’d place them in an area where economic activity exists. Also, how are we defining a city? Is the word ‘city’ becoming clichéd? Just like “innovation”… (cue dramatic sigh).

“Kotkin says low-density, car-dominated, heavily suburbanized areas with small central cores are likely the next wave of great American cities.”

-I absolutely agree with Kotkin in that low density, car-dominated areas are next. The infrastructure exists, moveable people exist, we’d be more likely to start corralling businesses there than go to a field and build a utopian city with bicycle lanes adjacent to tractors.

“He cautions ‘urbanistas’ to wake up and recognize that the future is going to look more like Houston, Charlotte and Phoenix and less like Boston, Chicago or San Francisco.”

-Well, I don’t think the future will look like Charlotte or Houston. The next cities might, but think of it in stages – we have to enter stage one car domination before evolving to city 2.0 with bikes and trams and transit. Its easier to take people who live somewhere and make them dense and miserable and then make their lives easier via light rail, than to build a light rail in middle of nowhere Nebraska and then expect people to move there.

“The best practice for fixing a city’s problems might be staying away from the best practices. Things that make one city livable may not work in another city. That’s the point Lindsey Davis, a city planner and blogger, makes in a recent post about best practices for cities.”

-OMG! THAT’S MY NAME! OMG!! AH! I’m KVELLING! AH!

Stay tuned for the next installment of The Good Plan, where Lindsey will take on Kotkin’s thesis in more detail, though with perhaps a touch less kvelling.

IMAGE CREDIT. Livability.
Mar 18
0

Temporary Event, Lasting Impression

By | Design, The Good Plan | No Comments

With the increasing popularity of urban athletic events, pop-up dinners, and creative ways to use existing space, cities are volunteering to temporarily host unprecedented amounts of people. Comparable to the Olympics, but at a smaller scale, this temporary use of space doesn’t often require the building of venues, but does demand solid infrastructure. Whether relying on transit systems, parking, plumbing, or electricity, the performance of aging systems become strained; think of the system as a sorority house where everyone plugs in their hair dryers at the same time. This sudden demand of energy, more often than not, causes infrastructure shut-down – too much is not always a good thing.

After the DC Rock N Roll marathon on Saturday, the line for the Metro was a half block long and growing. Thirty thousand runners sparked fifty-two street closures around the city. As I boarded my train with a New York City rush hour caliber crowd, I silently hoped my train was powerful enough to carry all of us to our destinations safely. It was, and we made it home without issue – but it did make me wonder when it is worth overriding the built urban system at the cost of hosting an event.

I had a contrasting experience in Philadelphia last year when I attended a Diner En Blanc. This pop-up dinner event where over a thousand people converge, dine, and dance in a public space, was executed beautifully. As we gathered into different parts around the city and made our way to Logan Circle, I was sure we would get disciplined at some point for being too loud, needing to leave, or swimming and dancing in the fountain after dinner – there was none of it. Philadelphia simply let us enjoy ourselves, and I came away with wholehearted thanks to the local government and the police department for allowing us to use the urban space in a way it had never been used before.

Participants of temporary events are left with an impression created not only from how the infrastructure performs, but the location in which the event is held. When holding an event in a city, organizers would presumably want to portray the place in the most favorable light. In the same way you clean your house before having guests over, you want to impress people with the setting and the surroundings – so how do you choose what to show off?

This introduces the element of access and marketability. While some areas may be in greater need than others for temporary visitors, publicity, and community building, they may also not be the areas to which you want to attract outsiders. Philadelphia may have given many of us a different impression had we not been dancing under the moonlight in a public fountain outside an art museum. How would my experience have been different if I were in an overgrown field, surrounded by the same 1,300 people but with a backdrop of vacant town homes or public housing? What if I were in a community garden surrounded by barbed wire? Perhaps my impression of the event would not have changed – but I’m willing to bet it would have.

City planners speak about the importance of access to public spaces and greening, but parks are just the tip of that iceberg. Each community needs space to play and be and go, but we also need to think about what we can see from the park. Looking at homes with cluttered yards gives us the impression we’re in a different place than it would should we look out from a park and see well-maintained residences and freshly painted porches. Attracting outsiders for temporary events provides an opportunity for a city to leave a lasting impression through a snapshot of an experience. Critical thoughts of what our city decides to show the public and what it decides to hide is worthy of analysis, because quite simply a city that decides to host an event directly reflects on the event organizers, as well as the city itself.

Image courtesy of Philly Loves Fun