PennTags Feed for /tag/urban_studies

Geography of immigrant labor markets : space, networks, and gender / Virginia Parks.

Parks, Virginia, 1970- . Geography of immigrant labor markets : space, networks, and gender / Virginia Parks. 1593320922 (alk. paper) series New York : LFB Scholarly Pub., 2005.
Call#: Van Pelt Library HD8081.A5 P365 2005

Drivers Feeling Shunned by D.C. - washingtonpost.com

Drivers Feeling Shunned by D.C.
City Less Welcoming to Suburban Cars

By Eric M. Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 6, 2008; Page A01

The District is escalating what some suburban commuters are calling its war against workers who drive into the city.
View Only Top Items in This Story

The city has changed parts of Constitution Avenue NE from a reversible commuter artery back to a quiet side street and is considering removing the reversible lane on 16th Street NW, a key commuting route from Montgomery County.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's administration also is studying closing the section of the Interstate 395 tunnel that connects with New York Avenue NW, expanding the use of speed cameras and increasing parking fees and enforcement. Fees for encroaching on a crosswalk would increase from $50 to $500 under a pedestrian safety proposal.

The District is moving toward becoming "the most anti-car city in the country," said John Townsend, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic. "They see commuters as the enemy."

City officials say that the moves are part of a policy of putting the needs of its residents and businesses before those of suburban commuters and that they are trying to create a walkable, bikeable, transit-oriented metropolis.

Like New York, London, Stockholm and Portland, Ore., District officials said, the city is reclaiming its streets for the people who live there. With billions of dollars invested in the Metro system, there are plenty of ways for commuters to get into the city without bringing exhaust-spewing vehicles with them, officials said.

Creating a Great Pedestrian City - City of Sydney

Professor Jan Gehl

Tuesday 11 September 2007

Jan Gehl

For over 40 years internationally renowned Danish architect Jan Gehl's career has focused on improving the quality of urban life, especially for pedestrians.

Jan discusses how his research on public spaces and public life has been applied successfully in cities across Europe, North America, South America, Asia, and Australia. He will also share his observations on the ways we can make Sydney a truly great pedestrian city.

Immigrants Turn to Farm Work Amid Building Bust - WSJ.com

Immigrants Turn to Farm Work Amid Building Bust

Growers Regain A Source of Labor; Wage Gap Narrows

By MIRIAM JORDAN

June 13, 2008; Page A4

The building bust is turning out to be an unexpected boon for another industry, agriculture, as many Hispanic immigrants who lost construction jobs return to the fields in search of work.

In recent years, the ranks of farm workers had been thinned by a crackdown on illegal immigration coupled with the lure of better-paying construction jobs. That left farmers scrambling to find workers to harvest labor-intensive crops. Now, growers and labor contractors from Florida to California are reporting that former carpenters, dry wallers and painters are returning.

"We had seen the labor supply dwindling year after year," said Richard Quandt, president of the Grower-Shipper Association of Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties. This year, "we are surprised to have a lot of workers." The area grows strawberries, greens, broccoli, grapes and other vegetables and fruits.

Philadelphia Migration Project

Working Paper

Immigrants and Suburbs: Growth and Distribution in Greater Philadelphia, 1970-2000: A Tract-Level Analysis

The late twentieth century witnessed a dramatic shift in the historic pattern of immigrant settlement within the United States. Since the nineteenth century, most European immigrants - with the important exception of farmers - had settled first in a small number of gateway cities where many rearticleed while a sizeable number fanned out to smaller cities along the coasts or to cities and large towns in the interior. After World War II, with the opening of suburbs huge numbers of these first generation European immigrants and their children, fresh with new prosperity, moved out of central cities. Following the 1965 lifting of nationality-based quotas, immigrants entered the United States in numbers that matched the great immigrant wave of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries... READ COMPLETE PAPER

In Toronto, cyclists form a first-of-its-kind union | csmonitor.com

In Toronto, cyclists form a first-of-its-kind union

Believed to be the first of its kind, the Toronto Cyclists Union plans to offer insurance, roadside assistance, advocacy, and even an online dating service.
By Susan Bourette | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor / June 6, 2008 edition

Guerrilla gardener movement takes root in L.A. area - Los Angeles Times

MODERN LIFE Guerrilla gardener movement takes root in L.A. area

BRIMMING with lime-hued succulents and a lush collection of agaves, one shooting spiky leaves 10 feet into the air, it's a head-turning garden smack in the middle of Long Beach's asphalt jungle. But the gardener who designed it doesn't want you to know his last name, since his handiwork isn't exactly legit. It's on a traffic island he commandeered.

"The city wasn't doing anything with it, and I had a bunch of extra plants," says Scott, as we tour the garden, cars whooshing by on both sides of Loynes Drive.

Scott is a guerrilla gardener, a member of a burgeoning movement of green enthusiasts who plant without approval on land that's not theirs. In London, Berlin, Miami, San Francisco and Southern California, these free-range tillers are sowing a new kind of flower power. In nighttime planting parties or solo "seed bombing" runs, they aim to turn neglected public space and vacant lots into floral or food outposts.

Portland Journal - As Portland Changes, Blacks and Whites Talk It Over - NYTimes.com

May 29, 2008
Portland Journal
Racial Shift in a Progressive City Spurs Talks
By WILLIAM YARDLEY

PORTLAND, Ore. - Not every neighborhood in this city is one of those Northwest destinations where passion for espresso, the environment and plenty of exercise define the cultural common ground. A few places are still described as frontiers, where pioneers move because prices are relatively reasonable, the location is convenient and, they say, they "want the diversity."

Yet one person's frontier, it turns out, is often another's front porch. It has been true across the country: gentrification, which increases housing prices and tension, sometimes has racial overtones and can seem like a dirty word. Now Portland is encouraging black and white residents to talk about it, but even here in Sincere City, the conversation has been difficult.

"I've been really upset by what I perceive to be Portland's blind spot in its progressivism," said Khaela Maricich, a local artist and musician. "They think they live in the best city in the country, but it's all about saving the environment and things like that. It's not really about social issues. It's upper-middle-class progressivism, really."

Ms. Maricich, 33, who is white, spoke after attending this month's meeting of Portland's Restorative Listening Project.

The goal of the project, which is sponsored by the city's Office of Neighborhood Involvement, is to have white people better understand the effect gentrification can have on the city's longtime black and other-minority neighborhoods by having minority residents tell what it is like to be on the receiving end.

East Side - Study Says Many Plazas Are Public in Name Only - NYTimes.com

East Side A New Study Faults Plazas as Public in Name, Private in Look

MICHAEL KEANE is not sure if any New Yorker, however brash and ill-mannered, feels comfortable walking into a restaurant, past the host’s podium and into the outdoor seating area, sitting down at a table set with silverware and unwrapping a brown bag lunch.

The question, for Mr. Keane, an urban planner, has less to do with dining etiquette and more with the fact that the outdoor seating area of the restaurant in question, Caliente Cab Company, at East 33rd Street and Third Avenue in Murray Hill, is a designated public space.

There are more than 500 privately owned public spaces in the city, mainly concentrated in Midtown and downtown Manhattan, where, since 1961, developers have been allowed to build taller buildings if they, in turn, agreed to have such spaces open to all.

But in a recent eight-month study of 77 privately owned public spaces on the East Side, Mr. Keane concluded that 30 of them, including the one at Caliente Cab Company, had obstacles to public access that included padlocked gates, piles of garbage and spikes on supposed seats. Mr. Keane called the Caliente Cab situation an example of “commandeering,” with the cafe’s customers monopolizing that particular outdoor space.

“There are plenty to choose from,” Mr. Keane said of the neighborhood’s public plazas. “Whether or not you can use them when you get there is another story.”

Oklahoma City swaps highway for park - USATODAY.com

Oklahoma City swaps highway for park

By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma has a radical solution for repairing the state's busiest highway.

Tear it down. Build a park.

The aging Crosstown Expressway — an elevated 4.5-mile stretch of Interstate 40 — will be demolished in 2012. An old-fashioned boulevard and a mile-long park will be constructed in its place.

Oklahoma City is doing what many cities dream about: saying goodbye to a highway.

More than a dozen cities have proposals to remove highways from downtowns. Cleveland wants to remove a freeway that blocks its waterfront. Syracuse, N.Y., wants to rid itself of an interstate that cuts the city in half.

City on Steroids // Current

China is building megacities like this at a pace and scale the
world has never seen before. Chongqing has 12 million people and counting.
It's part of the central government's plan to bring some of China's economic
boom to its impoverished interior province where three out of four Chinese
live. Vanguard takes you on a whirlwind tour of the city---from inside a
cramped boarding house where migrant workers to inside a starter apartment
of China's new class of yuppies; from inside ancient, crumbling teahouses to
gleaming new car factories.

Real Estate Guides - Trulia Real Estate Search

Search for sales statistics, real estate price trends, and real estate market activity in the United States by most popular real estate markets, by using our state map, or with our alphabetical directory of the United States cities. For the United States real estate market overview, see our chart of average sale prices and graph of real estate trends on each state page.

HUD USER - Datasets: Fair Market Rents

Data Sets - 50th Percentile Rent Estimates

50th Percentile Rent Estimates Rent estimates at the 50th percentile (or median) are calculated for all Fair Market Rent areas. THESE ARE NOT FAIR MARKET RENTS.

Real Estate Guides - Trulia Real Estate Search

the Center for Urban Pedagogy

WHO WE ARE

& WHAT WE DO

CUP makes educational projects about places and how they change.

Our projects bring together art and design professionals - artists, graphic designers, architects, urban planners - with community-based advocates and researchers - organizers, government officials, academics, service-providers and policymakers. These partners work with CUP staff to create projects ranging from high school curricula to educational exhibitions.

Our work grows from a belief that the power of imagination is central to the practice of democracy, and that the work of governing must engage the dreams and visions of citizens. CUP believes in the legibility of the world around us. What can we learn by investigation? By learning how to investigate, we train ourselves to change what we see.

Issues Philadelphia

The Economy League launched IssuesPhiladelphia.org in 2007 as a source of timely analysis, polls and indicators, and thought-provoking columns – nonpartisan information that can help to spur conversation about what we want from our City Hall and all branches of city government now and into the future.

Globalization, Regionalism, and Urban Restructuring: The Case of Philadelphia -- Hodos 37 (3): 358 -- Urban Affairs Review

Where Did All the Truckers Go? - New York Times

March 16, 2008
Gowanus
Where Did All the Truckers Go?
By DEBORAH KOLBEN

...

In the last couple of years, the high-end boutiques, cafes and restaurants that transformed Fifth Avenue have been spilling onto Fourth Avenue. But few residents expected Third Avenue to start going upscale so quickly, and some are already fearful that Park Slope and Carroll Gardens will merge to form one big brownstone Brooklyn neighborhood.

“They’re going to call Gowanus ‘West Park Slope’ or ‘East Carroll Gardens,’ ” Ms. Yurick said with a grimace. “It’s a joke. This is a truck route.”

The first major sign of gentrification on Third Avenue arrived in the beginning of February, when Bar Tano, an Italian restaurant with large glass windows and a bar that serves 40 types of Scotch, opened at Ninth Street in an abandoned storefront opposite a tire repair shop. Entrees include braised short-rib sandwiches with caramelized onions and homemade potato chips for $15, not exactly the plate of chicken and rice on the menu for $4.50 at Sonia’s, a Latino restaurant across the street.

West Philadelphia 1956-present

A guide to finding current research on West Philadelphia. This guide is still a work in progress.

Urban Studies 012

A research guide created for Urban Studies 012. Included are links to help students find information about specific place in Philadelphia through History.

The New York Times > New York Region > The City > Urban Studies: Many Lives, Many Wheels

The New York Times
February 13, 2005
URBAN STUDIES
Many Lives, Many Wheels
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

BICYCLES are everywhere in this eight-story building: bicycles leaning in the hallways, bicycles parked in the stairwells, bicycles nestled two deep in the single-room dwellings shared by three or four men.

The sprawling landmark building, at 31st and Broadway, is nestled in the middle of Manhattan's wholesale district. Its central, though unglamorous, location appeals to its most notable tenant population: Chinese deliverymen. An alternative to farther-flung quarters in Chinatown or Flushing, this outpost is only 10 minutes by bicycle to restaurants in Murray Hill, 20 minutes to those on the Upper West Side, 20 minutes to the Upper East Side.

Every morning around 10, the bicycles make an exodus as dozens of Chinese immigrants step out of the building and glide down 31st Street, their spinning wheels gently clicking.

At night, the process reverses. The men return, their bicycles casting long shadows under orange-tinged streetlights. Until last year, dozens of bicycles were chained along the scaffolding at night. Then the building was sold. The new management insisted that no bikes be left outside. So now the bicycles, seats covered with white plastic bags and frames fortified with duct tape, are taken into the cramped rooms.

For these quiet and nearly invisible deliverymen with few English skills, a bicycle is a lifeline. They often buy their bikes from black-market vendors who come by the restaurants. The prices are as low as $30 for creaky old models and as high as $80 for models with better maneuverability.

There is a tacit understanding that these bicycles are mostly stolen. The deliverymen shrug this off. After all, they are very often the victims that the bikes are stolen from.

Many of the men, having paid $30,000 to $65,000 to be smuggled into the United States, have not seen their children for years. Some, with orange-spiked hair and an enthusiasm for video games, are barely children themselves.

Home, which for most is Fujian Province in southern China, is reduced to photographs tucked into wallets, phone calls after work for as low as 2 cents a minute, and a firm determination that one day they will go back.

Most earn $1,000 to $1,500 a month, mostly from tips. "We can't do anything else because we don't speak English," said Chen, 37, who lives with three other men in a 10-foot-by-12-foot room. Two of his roommates are deliverymen: Lin, 55, who hasn't seen his family for 12 years, and baby-faced Little Chen, 22, who just arrived in New York.

In a corner of the room, behind the door, sat two bicycles, and just outside, a third one.

RETHINKING THE POLITICS OF DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT

STROM . "RETHINKING THE POLITICS OF DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT" Journal of urban affairs [0735-2166] 30 (2008). 37-61.

ABSTRACT: In the political science literature, downtown redevelopment has long been seen as the project of a region's economic elites. But in recent years, large corporations, banks, and department stores have in many cases abandoned central business districts, and downtowns are now more likely to be developed as centers of entertainment and culture, or as residential districts. This article posits that changing downtown land uses are accompanied by changes in the downtown influence structure, with nonprofit sector and real estate industry leaders now dominating downtown business organizations.

Land Use and Density in Cities with Congestion

Wheaton,WC . "Land Use and Density in Cities with Congestion" Journal of urban economics [0094-1190] 43.2 (1998). 258-.

abstract

It was well documented that monocentric spatial models with congestion require driving tolls to generate market efficiency. Because driving and location are equivalent, tolling congestion is the same as regulating density. This paper shows that internalizing the congestion externality always requires upward adjustments to market density—which are greatest at the urban center. This holds whether or not transportation capacity is optimally provided. Simulations suggest optimal cities should have central densities that are orders of magnitude greater than market

Urban Studies - Commuting Inequality between Cars and Public Transit: The Case of the San Francisco Bay Area, 1990