urban | ChangingMedia

Mar 03

Urban Perspective

By Lindsey Davis | The Good Plan | 7 Comments

One of the things I most greatly valued at the University of Vermont was that nobody took the surrounding natural beauty for granted. A postcard-worthy view of the mountains was never overlooked, and there was a somewhat fulfilling sentiment that came from watching passersby consistently turn their heads 90 degrees, taking in the light over the mountains. It was a moment to feel fortunate about where you are and the things that are bigger in life. Bigger than tests or roommate troubles or the collegiate broken heart. I remember an evening class which would break once per week so the entire class could climb the fire escape and watch the sunset.

Urban beauty is different. Mountains and treelines are replaced with street art and lighted facade. We’re lucky to have the water in Baltimore. The film noir feel of the dusky ships on Keith Avenue and South Clinton Street, the pattern of the city from the 13th floor. We have ducks and the occasional urban-safari worthy animal spotting, and the ability to walk to the end of the pier and hear relative silence. Perhaps a fog horn in the background. While there are moments of horror, such as the low-laying waterfront landings after a storm and rat roadkill, there are elements of our city – any city – with character and grace.

I was reminded to slow down and look at things differently after a Fast Company article crossed my path. Tracing a tiny Lego photographer on an urban quest to see the world, the photographs were a reminder of how mundane and everyday patterns are often, dare I say, pretty. I’ve spent a significant fraction of my life working in the outdoor industry, reminded that there are kids who grow up without parks, who have never been on farms, who have never been surrounded by trees or bumblebees. Though as I’ve come to learn cities, I realize these worlds of concrete are not without beauty. Lights reflecting on the water or the sunset in my rearview mirror still make me pause. The evening ride from Tide Point on the water taxi in the blackness of winter shows me a skyline every Baltimorean should make a point to experience. A rooftop deck on the fourth of July, the farmers market under 83, the man with the telescope in the middle of South Broadway. The urban landscape is often made beautiful because of the wooden boards or rain-soaked pavement which we work so hard to ignore.

While I often ache to see the stars and escape the sound of sirens, living in the city has forced me to redefine those things that help me breathe and remind me to reflect. I wonder if we were all a bit more adept in appreciating our landscape for the beauty it holds, if we’d work to make it better and add to it, rather than tearing it down. If we’d emphasize street art and ways to engage and enjoy, rather than throwing an empty bottle out of our car window as we pull onto Fayette Street. Perhaps a city doesn’t fit the traditional definition of beauty often affiliated with a bucolic pasture, but we have a moon and stars here too. We just have to look a little harder to see them.

Sep 23

The Trouble with “Good Schools”

By Robyn Stegman | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 6 Comments

If I had a nickel for every time someone called my high school “ghetto” I would be able to retire by now. In truth, our building was written up in Architectural Digest when it was first built and our school had amazing teachers and students. Yet, as a result of changing community demographics our school was no longer thought of as a “good school.” As Graham Couch, a fellow alum wrote:

“It was diverse scholastically, economically, racially, every which way. Its students and teachers were more a snapshot of the actual world than most places could offer…The view from elsewhere, as I often heard it, saw Sexton as a tough building, its diversity not necessarily considered a strength.”

Last week, community members and alumni of my high school gathered to welcome back students after a tragedy. Earlier in the week three students were ambushed and shot in the neighborhood by the school. The incident did nothing to help our reputation, in fact it reinforced many of the stereotypes people had.

When I was reading the coverage of the event I began to compare the narrative of Sexton’s tragedy to other school shootings. Fault for violence in an urban environment is often laid with the communities and people. Yet, rarely in mass school shootings, like Columbine or Newtown, does the media blame the environment. You don’t see people moving out of the suburbs or rural areas because they believe they are “dangerous for their kids.” Yet, statistically, mass shootings are more likely to happen in those settings. As Richard Florida points out in his article on the subject:

“By our accounting, more than 80 percent of America’s 21 worst mass killings identified by the Hartford Courant took place in suburban towns or rural areas, including each and every one of what the paper identifies as the five “worst school massacres in U.S. history.” More than two-thirds of the 61 mass shootings that occurred between 1982 and 2012 according to a list and map compiled this year by Mother Jones can also be traced to a suburban or rural location.”

He offers an explanation for this trend:

“Urban public schools are much more diverse across racial and ethnic lines. Yes, there is fighting and bullying like anywhere, but kids can view them less as personal attacks and more as group behavior. And often times, kids band together along these racial and ethnic lines. Just the opposite is likely in schools in more affluent suburban areas. Not only are these schools more economically advantaged, they tend to be much more homogenous. Since everyone is more or less “the same,” kids who are picked on are more likely to feel personally victimized. There is little to help diffuse the resulting anger or anxiety, so it festers and feeds off itself.”

Suburbs are incredibly effective at creating social isolation. They are usually absent of shared community space and activities that build a sense of community. Yet rarely do we talk about the “dangers of suburbia” in the same way we focus on the “dangers of the city.”

This media bias has a terrible impact on the lives of city dwellers. The perception of my school as a decrepit, violent, slum couldn’t have been further from the truth, but it started to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The decline of Sexton was accelerated in 1996 when Michigan passed “Schools of Choice,” which allowed students to choose which school they attended regardless of what district they lived in.

Seven miles away from Sexton, just outside of the city limits you can find Holt High School. Inside, the walls sport large flat screen TVs and every classroom is equipped with the latest technology. It’s easy to see why a parent might choose that school over my alma mater where there sometimes aren’t enough textbooks to allow students to take them home. And so Holt got students, active and supportive parents, and funding while Sexton lost the resources they needed to improve education for their students. The disparities between the two widened.

Theoretically, school choice programs are supposed to encourage competition. Yet when one side gets to choose their players and the other must make do with what’s left, how can you compete? Since students elect to go to a school outside of their district, the school isn’t obligated to accept them. That means schools can kick out children for discipline issues, sending them back to their original school. “Good” schools can choose the cream of the crop, which boosts their test scores and furthers the impression that their school is better, which attracts more funding and students.

The combination of policy, media bias, and community perception is harmful to both students who stay in schools like Sexton and move to schools like Holt. Diversity is the strength of Sexton — students benefit from being around people of diverse backgrounds, race, class, and viewpoints. People who move out of the district miss out on that. The media reaction to the shootings at our school furthers the segregation of our educational system and that makes no one safer. As my sister wrote after she learned of the violence, “Sexton is great school full of good kids in a peaceful community. I need to start seeing more news about that, not this.”

Aug 19

Suits vs. Sweatpants: The Urban Showdown

By Lindsey Davis | The Good Plan | No Comments

I am a glutton for nostalgia. I love the memory of how things used to be, inadvertently comparing new experiences to old. So it was with a sense of reminiscence that I stood outside Tio Pepes, fear reverberating through me. With the memory of elegance and lunches with my grandmother in mind, I would be crushed if I walked in to find the fabric tattered, the chairs worn, and diners in jeans. This seems to be a recurring theme for me – diminished elegance and the rise of informality; how fewer things require coats and ties, flip-flops have become commonplace, and the regal places of days past have crumbled, mimicking so many of the buildings around us.

I felt a similar dread a few years earlier, as I decided to step foot onto the 13th Floor for the first time in nearly two decades. I remembered the Belvedere Hotel from the Bar and Bat-Mitzvah days — pure glamor. But going into the bar (before its recent renovation), I was turned off by the dingy atmosphere and animal print rug. The disinvestment was evident, and it made me sad.

My mother often references going to the airport as a little girl – how her father wore a suit and tie and everyone dressed up for the airlines. Now, sweatpants with words across the bottom are fairly inescapable. Have we dis-invested in ourselves? My thoughts were echoed in a conversation with some Israeli relatives who had recently toured the east coast. I asked what their favorite city had been. They all chose Washington D.C. “It’s so classic, all the men are in suits, everyone is dressed nicely.” They felt that D.C. residents were proud of themselves and had thereby added an element of worth to their city. Not only was the infrastructure in D.C. seemingly shiny, but the way people presented themselves reflected this investment.

Much of how I gauge a place is based upon observation: is there trash in the streets and are there broken porches? This indicates pride of place. Are women walking around alone, and if so, are they carrying a handbag? This is my indicator for safety. Are the lawns overgrown and the homes visibly broken? This is the crumbling of infrastructure. The material things matter too – what types of cars are parked in the area, are there flower boxes? Are there gyms or pawn shops? I remember my mother nixing a potential apartment complex during one of my housing searches because “there were too many motorcycles in the parking lot.” But there’s another factor I haven’t paid much attention to, and that is whether or not people are dressed in a way that make them feel good about themselves — how they carry their bodies down the road — because regardless of what type of neighborhood we live in, we can still invest in ourselves.

What that investment means, though, can be complex. A friend told me an anecdote of a scene she witnessed downtown: A man and woman were preparing to cross the street. The woman was pushing her child in a stroller, and the man had his pants below his rear, his boxers doing much more than barely peeking above his waistband. As the woman with the stroller approached the same corner as the man with his pants around his knees, she turned 180 degrees so as to not have to face the man. Even though they were walking in the same direction, her inability to understand his fashion decisions, and her reaction to his exposed behind, inclined her to physically turn herself around. What she, perhaps, interpreted as offensive was essentially his presentation of self, and therefore played directly into her assumption of place. This was, as I see it, more of a gap in understanding. Both of these individuals were dressed presentably in their own minds, but his decisions led her to assume a level of disinvestment. I’m not advocating for all of us to dress the same; rather that it’s important to understand how our fashion decisions play into the greater fabric of neighborhood perceptions.

I can’t correlate the level of formality with crime. And I can’t correlate fashion with socioeconomic status – as ripped jeans can cost hundreds of dollars, or you can buy them at Goodwill. What I do see, is that how we represent ourselves also acts as the window to our cities. How we present ourselves alludes to something greater than our individuality — it gives people an insight into the city itself.

IMAGE CREDIT. [Photo from NYC Fashion Night Out by Flickr user MagneticArt.

May 20

Weird Before It Was Cool

By Robyn Stegman | Social Enterprise, The Thagomizer | 3 Comments

A few weeks ago, ChangeEngine challenged us to come up with a tagline for Baltimore. The one I chose was a spin on the Keep Austin Weird campaign:

Keep Austin Weird is a slogan created by Red Wassenich and adopted by the Austin Independent Business Alliance to promote local business in Austin, Texas. It has been seen as a huge success in celebrating the city’s tolerance, innovation, and local flavor. The campaign has spawned hundreds of knock-offs including Keep Portland Weird, Keep Ashville Weird, and even the small town in Virginia where I am currently writing this has a Keep Staunton Weird campaign.

While I love the celebration of quirk, seeing the campaign through the lens of Baltimore brings some interesting questions to light that I am going to explore in a three part series. Over the next weeks I will look at the Keep Austin Weird campaign and ask three key questions:

Who gets to define weird?
Who benefits from weird?
How can we celebrate a weird economy?

The first question hit me when I was reading Lindsey Davis’ blog this week on “Embracing the Noise.” Often times the “Keep Weird” campaigns focus on businesses or festivals that define the city but in reality some of our favorite things about our locale is the people you find on the streets. The “Oh Baltimore” moments people have shared this past week with ChangeEngine show a side of Baltimore often not embraced by people who try to brand our city, but nevertheless are one of the reasons we stay.

This brings me to my first question: who gets to define weird? One of the criticism of the Keep Portland Weird campaign is that it only celebrates the young Portlandia generation and not the original residents of the Oregon town. Most campaigns generally only celebrate brick and mortar local businesses, excluding hustlers like the amazing makeshift market that appears daily on the corner of 25th and North. Keep Weird campaigns tend to focus on gentrified areas where local businesses thrive and problems are kept at bay.

We often deny that weird can sometimes be uncomfortable. The man who shouts at you for no apparent reason, the group of loiterers who mingle at the bus stop on the corner, the person who asks you for money every time you leave the grocery store are all part of the city too but rarely are they symbols of any Keep Weird campaign. This is why I love guest blogger Devan Southerland’s love note to Lexington Market. When you watch the lost tourist souls, bravely venturing from the Inner Harbor, their wide eyes desperately trying to get a Findley’s crab cake, you realize like tourists in every city they fail to see what truly makes this city incredible. It is not the crab cake that defines Baltimore, it is the people you have to weave through to get there.

In Baltimore everyone defines our city. It reminds me of a line from “Good Morning Baltimore” in John Waters’ Hairspray:

There’s the flasher who lives next door
There’s the bum on his bar room stool
They wish me luck as I go to school.”

It seems like Baltimore has always been defined by its more seedy elements. After all, our most famous resident died in a gutter. The most popular TV show about the city is The Wire putting the city’s problems and complexities in full view. This is why most people outside of the city give me a skeptical look when I describe the city as magical. On the surface Baltimore doesn’t seems like the king of weird. We have nothing to compare to South by Southwest, we’re not the live music capital of the world, we don’t have a robust local business scene, and while growing everyday our population of hipsters has not yet sufficiently taken over the city to turn it into the next weird colony.

What we do have is a redefinition of weird that is more than a celebration of gentrified funkiness. Our “Oh Baltimore” can be simultaneously uncomfortable and endearing. It is a city where “the sketchy” part of town is only two blocks away from “the nice” part of town and no one can hide from our city’s problems. As with most major cities we have our divisions and deep rooted problems, yet unlike most cities our grit is what makes us iconic. Our weird is what unites us. It doesn’t solely reside in AVAM or MICA or Hampden, it is on every corner, it relaxes on stoops, it dies in gutters, it lives in bustling markets. That’s because Baltimore was weird before it was cool and we’ll be weird long after.