Bringing devolution to the hood New Orleans and urban planning Why urban policies don't do what they seek WHY SMART GROWTH ISN'T AS SMART AS IT THINKS IT IS MAKING CITIES BLACK & POOR: THE HIDDEN STORY A SHORT HISTORY OF BLACK WASHINGTON CHANGING HOW URBAN PLANNING WORKS WHAT RAILS AND ROADS TELL US ABOUT CLASS & POWER NEIGHBORHOODS & DEVOLUTION OF POWER PRESERVING CULTURE & COMMUNITY URBAN STATEHOOD: WHY WE NEED MORE STATES
BIG
BOXES
COMMUNITIES HOMELESSNESS SPORTS
& STADIA STATS TRANSPORTATION URBAN
ECOLOGY
BACK TO TOP WE HAVE THE SAME RAIL MILEAGE AS IN 1881 AND TRAINS ARE SLOWER THAN THEY WERE 60 YEARS AGO
BACK TO TOP Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans Film of 1906 San Francisco street life Where our transit money should be going instead of high speed rail  SHOT FROM THE FRONT OF A STREETCAR
BACK TO TOP 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.
BACK TO TOP We have in recent decades been so intent on making our cities neat and orderly that we have forgotten that the major contribution of the city is its explosive and random potential. Our goal has been physical order and fiscal benefits; the results have been social disorder and huge deficits. A thriving urban ecology should not just be about clean air and trees; but also about communities and economic survival, justice, decent education, security, happiness, the joy of chance, variety, and opportunity. Cities often fail us but it is their enduring service to both shelter and venture that makes even the grimmest among them continuing magnets. Even as those who have used them well and long for their own purposes flee to the quiet, comfort, and safety of another place, the artist, the drug dealer cashing in his chips for a legal business, the ambitious new immigrant, the young college grad, the entrepreneur, move in and begin the urban story again. Free from the predetermined human and physical geography of a rural or small town community, we have a chance to design our own environment. In the end, the city, becomes not just a place but, as Brown University's Arnold Weinstein has suggested, "work being done." We now comprehend the hazards of blithely pouring DDT over crops, slashing through treelands, or fouling the air. But we still act as thought we can, without penalty, wipe out neighborhoods, force mass migrations, rip out favorite meeting places for people, or tear down centers of communications, culture and commerce that are as important to a community as a marsh is to a flyway One of the reasons liberals don't do better is because they use phrases like "urban sprawl" to describe the places where about half of America lives, most by some degree of choice. While there is nothing wrong with trying to encourage denser, less traffic dependent communities, it doesn't help to bad mouth all contrary communities while doing it. What is happening now is the suburban equivalent of the 1960s when liberals and urban planners disparaged inner city communities by calling them ghettos. Like Toronto planner Terry Fowler, one can speak of the importance of replacing mobility with access or of the advantages, with high fuel costs, of having more of what we need closer to where we live. People will respond to practical solutions far better than to vague goals disrespectful of their communities. The key point should not be to reach some abstract goal but to improve the life of communities affected by decades of poor urban planning. Many of these communities are already attractive places to live but suffer from transportation, shopping and energy inefficiencies. The key is to plan for the people who live there and not for the soulless desires of master plans. The next time you're tempted to use the word, just remember: it ain't sprawl, it's somebody's home. Good urban economics would be the economics of small business, of self-generating economies, of cooperatives and of neighborhood-owned companies. It would be the economics of recycling money within the city, of making things other cities need, and of giving every resident a fair chance to make a buck. The key to the economic revival of the older city is the development of these self-generating economies. The self-generating economy has a long history in America. Many of the country's early communities were largely self-sufficient. This self-sufficiency, however, disappeared with the concentration of industry and land ownership. In cities, one can easily find self--generating economies although we seldom recognize them as such. The explosion of the legal profession, for example, reflects in no small part the ability of lawyers to create jobs for each other. The yuppie phenomenon can be seen as a self-generating economy: yuppies creating artificial needs for other yuppies and with some selling and others buying items that fulfill these needs. The importance of such economies tends to be disregarded because they don't have the visible form of a single corporation or factory. Yet the impact can be dramatic. For example, if all of Washington's taxi drivers worked for a single company, they would form the largest firm in the city. You'd never guess it from public policy, which is far more concerned with the regulation of these activities than with the encouragement of them. They are treated more as a nuisance than an essential part of the economic life of the city. Thus, one of the few industries anyone in the city can enter without the vagaries of "personnel procedures" and without a college education is actively discouraged. . . The more we step into a paradigm of urban ecology, the more we find ourselves drifting closer to other things -- our work, our food, our environment, and our neighbors. Our sense of order no longer relies -- in the tradition of American city planners from L'Enfant to Robert Moses -- upon outward symmetry, illusions of order, and grandeur. Rather it seeks inner integration and grace. Our concept of the city steps away from the cold rigidity of the blueprint and comes closer to the joyful exuberance of a Richard Scarry drawing. We stop worrying about the sleek exterior of the car and concern ourselves with the less aesthetic but more essential engine. For each of us there is a public and a private city. Some live primarily in former and typically describe the city with concrete numbers -- so many of some problem per 100,000 -- and abstract phrases such as "we need a public-private partnership." Many, many more, though, know the city as a collection of specific stories and people. It is not just understanding that gets lost in this gap. Urban policy seeks to improve a city's numbers rather than the specificity of individual lives. The result is that many plans still -- although more covertly than in the days of "urban removal" -- implicitly assume that part of the solution is a better class of people moving to the place being planned. We do not yet require human impact statements that might reveal a plan's true cost in higher rents, ethnic and economic change, effect on existing social structure and institutions, or access to places that matter. The problem with urban planners is two fold. First, they work for the wrong people, the government, rather than for the citizens. As local governments have become more corrupt and more beholden to the interests of a small number of developers and other businesses, urban planning has inevitably come to reflect these perverse priorities. Second, urban planners believe in sweeping physical solutions to social problems. The idea, Richard Sennett has written, goes back to the 1860s design for Paris by Baron Haussmann. Haussmann, Sennett suggests, bequeathed us the notion that we could alter social patterns by changing the physical landscape. This approach was not about urban amenities such as park benches and gas lighting or technological improvements such as indoor plumbing but about what G. K. Chesterton called the huge modern heresy of "altering the human soul to fit its conditions, instead of altering human conditions to fit the human soul." Modern planning was in part spurred by the desire of the elites to recover their cities from the immigrant politicians and riff raff who had seized urban America in the late 19th and early 20th century. Much of what was described as "reform," was in fact just a transfer of power - including the power to corrupt - back to the elites.The same thing would happen again folloowing the migration of blacks to the cities in the last half of the 20th century. It was not urban development for the masses but urban recovery for the elites.
BACK TO TOP What Washington's Metro can teach us about transportation The Dallas metro region now has 72 miles of light rail, 55 stations, and an average of about 60,000 riders per weekday. 36.4 percent more people rode Dallas Area Rapid Transit's light rail in the third quarter of 2011 over the year before Watchdog panel pans California high speed rail Why high speed rail is in trouble America's only personal rapid transit Tax benefit of commuting being cut by congressional inaction Corporados seizing control of capital's uniquely free taxi industry
MORE TRANSPORTATION NEWS IMPROVED BUS SYSTEM FOR MANHATTAN  Where our transit money should be going instead of high speed rail Why China's high speed rail is falling short Hidden parking in Budapest  2010 HOW TRANSIT PROJECTS FAVOR BANKS & DEVELOPERS  THE COST OF IGNORING RAIL SERVICE  2009 STUDY FINDS RED LIGHT CAMERAS CAUSE ACCIDENTS MAJOR LONDON INTERSECTION ADOPTS SCRAMBLE APPROACH WASHINGTON DC KILLING ITS EXCELLENT CAB SYSTEM WHAT RAILS AND ROADS TELL US ABOUT CLASS & POWER  WHY PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION IS BETTER THAN BUILDING MORE ROADS LIGHT RAIL VS. BUS RAPID TRANSIT LIGHT RAIL VS. BUS RAPID TRANSIT 2008  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. 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. TOP BICYCLE CITIES OF THE WORLD 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 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/ 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." CITIES TURNING BIKE
FRIENDLY 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. . . TROUBLED BRIDGES 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 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 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. . .  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. 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. 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. 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.   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. 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. DUTCH CITY REMOVES TRAFFIC LIGHTS, INCREASES SAFETY
2011 New Orleans population down 29% 2010 GALLERY: UNFORGETTABLE KATRINA PHOTOS FIVE YEARS LATER: THE KATRINA PAIN INDEX 2009 KATRINA VICTIMS TO BE HOMELESS AGAIN 2008 ASSIVE DISCRIMINATION COLORS KATRINA RECOVERY 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. KATRINA KIDS FACE LIFELONG HEALTH PROBLEMS HALF OF NEW ORLEANS POOR PERMANENTLY DISPLACED 2007 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.p 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. 2006 KATRINA: A GRIM ONE YEAR FACT SHEET PROGRESS REPORT - 1,833 lives lost. 270,000 homes destroyed. $55 billion in insured damage. Up to $1.4 billion in American tax dollars wasted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. But even more staggering has been the slow pace of recovery on the Gulf Coast. Yesterday, as part of the White House's "public relations blitz," Bush trumpeted in his weekly radio address that the federal government has "committed $110 billion to the recovery effort." But those billions of dollars have yet "to translate into billions in building." In his Sept. 15 speech, Bush stated that his administration "will stay as long as it takes, to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives" and promised to "get the work done quickly." But one year after the storm, repopulation in New Orleans "has slowed to a trickle, leaving the city with well under half its pre-storm population of 460,000." Lacking the resources to return to the city are many African-Americans who formed the working-class backbone of the city. The Houston Chronicle notes, "Vast sections of New Orleans are still devoid of life, populated by endless rows of broken, empty houses waving For Sale signs like flags of surrender." Many New Orleans property owners may lose their former homes. The one year anniversary of Katrina is the deadline when property owners "must have gutted the buildings or shown some signs they intend to rebuild when they can. If they don't, the city can take it as a given they do not intend to return." The average selling price for homes in areas that weren't affected by flooding has risen 25 percent. Rental rates have risen 40 percent, disproportionately affecting black and low-income families. In Biloxi, MS, 70 percent of renters affected by the storm are black, according to an NAACP study, and another report by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights noted that almost "100 percent of public housing families in New Orleans are African-American." Approximately 112,000 low-income homes were damaged, but only a fraction of federal housing assistance has been earmarked for rental units. More than 81,000 regional businesses were affected by the storm, resulting in the loss of 450,000 jobs. . . Bush touted the government's $110 billion commitment to Katrina recovery, . . . but in reality, just $44 billion has been spent. Approximately 60 percent of the businesses in New Orleans have still not reopened. According to a report by the Democratic members of the House Small Business Committee, "80 percent of small businesses on the Gulf Coast have not yet received loans promised by the federal government." A White House "Fact Sheet" released in advance of Katrina's one year anniversary notes that FEMA has provided $5.6 billion to repair and replace damaged public infrastructure. But Gulf Coast Recovery Coordinator Donald E. Powell has admitted that nearly a third of the trash in New Orleans has yet to be picked up. Sixty percent of New Orleans homes still lack electricity and just 66 percent of public schools have reopened. Only 17 percent of the city's buses are operational, causing severe problems for the many residents who don't own cars. "Look at what we're getting in terms of services," said Janet Howard, of the Bureau of Governmental Research, a nonprofit group in New Orleans. "It's basically a nonfunctioning city." Crime has risen again in New Orleans -- the homicide rate is nearly 10 times the national average -- but only seven of 13 courtrooms have reopened and judges have a backlog of nearly 7,000 cases. A recent report by the Department of Justice found that in New Orleans, "justice is simply unavailable." But where the federal, state, and local governments have been absent, citizen activism has surged in the wake of the storm, "chipping away at some of this city's unhealthy institutions." Many schools -- formerly in "the control of a corrupt district office" -- are now being managed by parents and community activists as charter schools, and newcomers are pushing for reform and tighter ethics in the City Council. Health care is an increasing problem in the post-Katrina Gulf Coast. The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals estimated that "New Orleans has lost half of its physicians and suffers from a shortage of 1,000 nurses." Forty-four percent of adult caregivers now lack health coverage and "34 percent of children in FEMA-subsidized communities have at least one chronic health condition that requires treatment, but half of the affected children no longer have a medical provider." Even though the population of New Orleans is at less than half of its pre-storm population, the suicide rate has tripled and there is no capacity to deal with mental health and substance abuse problems. The people of New Orleans are also suffering from a lack of hospitals and the inability to receive immediate care from emergency rooms. A June Government Accountability Office report found that between $600 million and $1.4 billion in taxpayer dollars has been wasted on "improper and potentially fraudulent individual assistance payments." Payments went to Katrina evacuees to pay for items such as Dom Perignon champagne, New Orleans Saints season tickets, and adult-oriented entertainment. A recent report by the House Committee on Government Reform found that 19 Katrina contracts -- worth $8.75 billion -- "experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement." The head of the Army Corps of Engineers recently expressed skepticism that the New Orleans levees could withstand a hurricane with a heavy storm surge this year. In order for the levees to withstand a Category 5 hurricane and for residents of New Orleans to finally feel safe, another $30 billion will need to be spent. Unfortunately, as the New Orleans Times-Picayune notes, the federal government's "commitment to the long-term protection of South Louisiana is still uncomfortably murky." |
What Washington's Metro can teach us about transportation  Public parking in private driveways Watchdog panel pans California high speed rail Cities turning off street lights to save money NYC's medium income same as Greece, bottom third is below China Michael Bloomberg would cut city's teaching staff by half 65 story underground skyscraper proposed for Mexico City Megacities are high density metropolises with at least 10 million inhabitants. The number of these megacities climbed from 10 in 1992 to 21 in 2010, a 110% increase, adding on average one megacity every two years. Fifteen of the world’s 21 megacities are found in developing countries. The largest megacity today is Tokyo which counts nearly 37 million persons, more than Canada’s total population. - UN Environment Program IBM finds new way to rip off cities Cities may do better with carbon emissions than thought How urban planning killed Washington's Chinatown Chris Hedges on Camden NJ: America's worst off city 2010
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 2010 MOST METRO AREAS STILL LOSING JOBS TOWN FINALLY MAKES AMENDS FOR ETHNIC CLEANSING WHICH CITIES HAVE THE MOST DEPRESSING LOCAL NEWS? VANCOUVER OLYMPICS ALREADY HAVE A LOSER; THE HOMELESS BUILDING A NEW ORLEANS HOUSE THAT FLOATS DECEMBER 2009  NOVEMBER 2009 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
JULY 2009  JUNE 2009 THE MYTH OF URBAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT THE DANGERS OF PRIVATIZING CITY PROGRAMS  MAY 2009 CITY GOVERNMENTS SQUEEZING CITIZENS WITH NEW FEES BASEMENT APARTMENTS IN THE SKY APRIL 2009 ANTARCTIC ICE SHEET MELTING WOULD SWAMP DC, NYC, LA MARCH 2009  FEBRUARY 2009 JANUARY 2009 VOTERS HAVE APPROVED $74 BILLION IN NEW PUBLIC TRANSIT THIS YEAR WHAT WILL BECOME OF THE SUBURBS? OCTOBER 2008 HOW TO REDUCE VEHICLE FUEL CONSUMPTION
75% MORE CYCLISTS MEAN FEWER ACCIDENTS 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 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. JULY 2008 JAMES KUNSTLER ON THE END OF SUBURBIA JUNE 2008 AMERICA'S OTHER HOUSING CRISIS 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 Sam Smith - 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: -- 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 MINNEAPOLIS RANKED MOST LITERATE CITY THE IGNORED GREENNESS OF HISTORIC PRESERVATION 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  FEBRUARY 2008 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 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 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. . . ANOTHER REASON YOU MAY NOT WANT TO WRECK THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM OCTOBER 2007 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  THE BLUE TAPE SCREED THE 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.". . . 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 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  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 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." 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. 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? 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. . . 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/ 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' 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 STUDY 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 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 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 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 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 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 SAFER THAN ITS MOST POLICED CITY  Since 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. DECEMBER 2006 THE DECLINE OF MIDDLE CLASS NEIGHBORHOODS 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 |
