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Call#: Van Pelt Library HD8081.A5 P365 2005
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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 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.”
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
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.
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.
& 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.
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.
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.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Call#: Van Pelt Library HD2346.U52 C535 2006
Call#: Van Pelt Library HD259 .C687 2002
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Fri, Oct 12 - 4:00pm - 5:45pm Building/Room: Philadelphia Marriott / Room 414
Session Participants:
Rags to Riches: Junk Dealers in the Nineteenth-Century American City
*Wendy Woloson (Library Company of Philadelphia)
Second-hand Cities: Race and Region in the Philadelphia Antique Trade, 1860s-1960s
*Alison Isenberg (Rutgers University, New Brunswick/Piscataway (NJ))
Culture of Thrift: Modern Second-hand Consumerism in Orlando, Florida, 1940-1990
*Jennifer Le Zotte (University of Virginia (VA))
Commentator: Helen Sheumaker (Miami University of Ohio (OH))
Commentator: Marina Moskowitz (University of Glasgow (United Kingdom))
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Fri, Oct 12 - 8:00am - 9:45am Building/Room: Philadelphia Marriott / Room 403
Title Displayed in Event Calendar: Jane Jacobs and Our Urban Myths
Session Participants:
"Here, But Also There: Jane Jacobs's Hudson Street Doppelganger and Our Urban Myths"
*Peter L. Laurence (University of Pennsylvania (PA))
"The Feminine Mystique: Gender and the Myth of Jane Jacobs"
*Jennifer Hock (Harvard University (MA))
"The Nature of Diversity: Jane Jacobs's Urban Ecology"
*Jamin Creed Rowan (Boston College (MA))
"Elementary Republics and Little Platoons: Jacobs's Localism, White Ethnic Revival and the 1970s Neighborhoods Movement"
*Benjamin Mark Looker (Yale University (CT))
Commentator: Christopher Klemek (George Washington University (DC))
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Thu, Oct 11 - 10:00am - 11:45am Building/Room: Philadelphia Marriott / Room 404
Title Displayed in Event Calendar: Seeing in color: visual culture and racial politics in Philadelphia
Session Participants:
Session Organizer: Tanya Sheehan (Rutgers University, New Brunswick/Piscataway (NJ))
Chair: Tanya Sheehan (Rutgers University, New Brunswick/Piscataway (NJ))
"If this war is to be forgotten, ...what shall men remember?": The African American presence at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition
*Susanna W. Gold (Temple University (PA))
Imprinting race: The Philadelphia Fine Print Workshop and the visual politics of race in the 1930s
*Erin Park Cohn (University of Pennsylvania (PA))
From Africa and the streets of Philadelphia: Georges Adéagbo's America in "Abraham - the Friend of God"
*Emily Hage (Philadelphia Museum of Art (PA))
Commentator: Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw (University of Pennsylvania (PA))
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Thu, Oct 11 - 10:00am - 11:45am Building/Room: Philadelphia Marriott / Room 403
Title Displayed in Event Calendar: Living in the City of Angels
Session Participants:
Session Organizer: ASA Staff (ASA)
Chair: Jose Manuel Alamillo (Washington State University, Spokane (WA))
A Ban on a Noisy Existence: The Los Angeles Leaf Blower Ban, Spatialized Whiteness and the Gardeners' Struggle for Dignity
*Daniel Olmos (University of California, Santa Barbara (CA))
Gay Mexican Immigrants Arriving and Surviving in Los Angeles: Intersecting Identities and Transnational Social Networks
*James Paul Thing (University of Southern California (CA))
Photodocumenting Cultural Landscapes: The (Re)production of Latino Vending 'Street-Scapes' in Los Angeles.
*Lorena Munoz (University of Southern California (CA))
Commentator: Jose Manuel Alamillo (Washington State University, Spokane (WA))
Schedule Information:
Scheduled Time: Sat, Oct 13 - 10:00am - 11:45am Building/Room: Philadelphia Marriott / Room 401
Title Displayed in Event Calendar: Chinatowns: Then and Now
Session Participants:
Session Organizer: ASA Staff (ASA)
Chair: Lili Kim (Hampshire College (MA))
Panelist: Yong Chen (University of California, Irvine (CA))
Panelist: K Scott Wong (Williams College (MA))
Panelist: Karen J. Leong (Arizona State University (AZ))
Panelist: Rocio G. Davis (University of Navarra (Spain))
What is the Right to the City Alliance?
Right to the City (RTTC) is a newly formed alliance of base building organizations from cities across the country as well as researchers, academics, lawyers, and other allies. We came together in January of 2007 to build a united response to gentrification and the drastic changes imposed on our cities. We stand together under the notion of a Right to the City for all.
Right to the City offers a framework for resistance and a vision for a city that meets the needs of working class people. It connects our fights against gentrification and displacement to other local and international struggles for human rights, land, and democracy.
We are coming together under a common framework to increase the strength of our community organizations and our collective power. Our goal is to build a national urban movement for housing, education, health, racial justice and democracy.
DOI: 10.1177/1078087406298118
© 2007 SAGE Publications
Rethinking the Dual City
Alexander J. Reichl
Queens College, CUNY, Flushing, New York
This article examines social polarization in New York City: first, as an objective condition among city neighborhoods; and second, as an issue in city politics. Data on income, poverty, housing, and crime provide little evidence of growing polarization between low- and high-income neighborhoods in the 1990s. However, the data reveal a striking contrast between the spectacular gains of core areas and the widespread stagnation and decline across low-, middle-, and high-income neighborhoods outside the core. Polarization has not proved a viable political issue because it becomes subsumed in racial/ethnic politics; yet the data suggest that progressives might prevail with a dual-city discourse that highlights the significance of polarization for neighborhoods outside the core.
Key Words: social polarization • New York City politics • dual city • neighborhood decline • urban neoliberalism
Exerpt P. 683
------------------------------
Despite Ferrer’s failures there are indications that a nascent outerborough coalition (one that bridges the racial/ethnic and class divides) stirs beneath the surface of New York politics, awaiting a political movement to represent its interests. For one thing there is some evidence that the outerborough coalition operates as something akin to the “potential groups” described by Truman (1951), which influence policy precisely because officials fear their mobilization. Mayor Bloomberg’s backpedaling on plans to curtail trash collection outside Manhattan, close zoos in Brooklyn and Queens, and eliminate a scholarship program for the city university can be interpreted as efforts to preempt swelling discontent in the outer boroughs. Indeed, midway through Bloomberg’s first term some observers saw a new “borough politics” emerging in opposition to the mayor’s handling of the city’s fiscal crisis (Steinhauer 2003). As one Democratic strategist put it: “[A] Democratic strategy for victory in the [2005] mayoral race has to involve uniting African-Americans and Latinos with Whites in the outer boroughs who are unhappy with Bloomberg and who are upset about taxes and other issues” (quoted in Steinhauer 2003). Bloomberg’s image as a wealthy Manhattanite out of touch with the everyday struggles of middleclass New Yorkers seemed to provide a galvanizing target, and discursive trope, for an outer-borough coalition.
------------------------------
AMSTERDAM, Aug. 8 — On a recent Saturday during the confusion of this watery city’s annual Gay Pride Parade along the majestic Princes Canal, a beach umbrella was knocked into the water from the foredeck of Jackie Wijnakker’s houseboat, so she dove into the water to fetch it, unsuccessfully. It was only the second time in 17 years that she had jumped into the canal, and she cannot recall what she was trying to retrieve the first time. At any rate, she said with a laugh, “I’m too old to be diving into canals.”
She told the tale as a testament to how clean the water is, despite its murky, khaki color. “The canals are flushed regularly,” said Ron Van Heukelom, a neighbor who lives on dry land and has never ventured into the canal.
The flushing is necessary because, while most of Amsterdam’s 2,800 houseboats have running water, electricity and gas heat, few are connected to sewerage systems and continue to spill their waste into the canals.
The houseboats’ lack of toilet training is their dirty little secret, one that sits uncomfortably with a new generation of wealthier, more demanding owners who are leading a gentrification of the houseboat scene. In the process, they are displacing the less affluent boat people, many of whom are relics of the 1960s and 1970s era of flower power now struggling to pay the upkeep on their boats.
“The water is cleaner than it looks,” said Monique J. M. Jacobs, an official of the city agency responsible for water and the boats. The canals, she explained, are flushed by opening and closing locks about twice a week, and in summer more often. “Small fish are coming back, and also birds that feed off the fish,” she said. “In the old days it was awful. It stank in summer.”
Call#: Van Pelt Library Rosengarten Reserve HX806 .H3 2000
If you can afford it. The condos cost about $700 a square foot, meaning a nice two-bedroom condo -- with windows on two sides and great views -- runs about $1 million.
A few evenings later, I found myself in the cramped living room of a single-family home in a suburb of Ventura, one of about 180 houses built a decade ago for buyers with annual incomes of about $50,000. Because the original development was federally subsidized, the homeowners can sell their house only at a restricted sales price of $300,000 to $400,000, which is 20% to 40% below the market price.
The cap on the selling price, the homeowners told me, has brought some changes to their neighborhood. It allows the working poor to afford these houses by teaming up to buy them. Realtors say four, five, even six people are listed on mortgage titles to qualify for financing. Seven, eight, nine cars are parked in the driveways and on the streets in front of the houses.
What's going on here? For a century, people in Southern California moved to the suburbs as they got richer, leaving the more "urban" parts of town to poor people. Now that pattern has reversed itself. Affluent people are leaving the suburbs to live in the city, while the working poor -- people who have jobs but don't earn enough to exceed the poverty line -- are doubling and tripling up in the suburbs to buy houses.
The migration of the affluent to the inner city has gradually increased in the last three years. According to a study by the Downtown Center Business Improvement District, the household median income of downtown residents with a least one earner was about $99,600 a year in 2006, roughly $28,000 higher than that of Beverly Hills. Nearly half of those surveyed reported annual income of $100,000 to above $250,000.
A Brief History of Neoliberalism [02:02:30]
David Harvey
@ University of Pennsylvania (2006-11-02
From the Urban Studies Program at UPenn: "In his talk, Harvey will draw on his recent book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), in which he traces the rise of neoliberal principles based on the theory of free markets and unfettered international capital flows from an obscure economic theory to dominance on the world stage. Harvey shows how proponents of a neoliberal economic philosophy, such as the influential leaders Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, gained the consensus of key figures and economic and political institutions, driven by an aspiration to re-establish class power. He dissects the logic of neoliberalism, revealing its built-in contradictions and the tremendous variation in how it looks from place to place and at different scales. He will talk about how cities have both complied and resisted neoliberalism's discipline."
Lecture begins 00:06:35. Lecture ends and questions begin 01:25:55. Audio goes bad around 01:34:00.
By DAVID POMERANTZ
Special to the Sun
July 24, 2007
For years, community leaders in the Upper East and West sides have been complaining about deliverymen who ride bicycles on sidewalks, run red lights, and generally menace pedestrians.
"The cyclists hit people left and right and just keep on going," the president of the 20th Police Precinct community council on the Upper West Side, Sam Katz, said. Ms. Katz and other leaders are counting on a new law that takes effect Thursday to help address the problem. The law, passed in March, requires restaurant managers to provide their deliverymen with safety equipment such as helmets, bells, and headlights. It also obliges restaurant managers to hang up posters — written in both English and the language spoken by the deliverymen — outlining the rules of the road for cyclists.
Deliverymen on bicycles irk residents on the Upper West Side so much that they are the no. 1 complaint heard by the 20th Precinct there, Lieutenant Biagio Carbone said.
What is Walk Score?
Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc.
How It Works
Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. Check out how Walk Score doesn't work.
What does my score mean?
Your Walk Score is a number between 0 and 100. The walkability of an address depends on how far you are comfortable walking-after all, everything is within walking distance if you have the time. Here are general guidelines for interpreting your score:
* 90 - 100 = Walkers' Paradise: Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car.
* 70 - 90 = Very Walkable: It's possible to get by without owning a car.
* 50 - 70 = Some Walkable Locations: Some stores and amenities are within walking distance, but many everyday trips still require a car.
* 25 - 50 = Not Walkable: Only a few destinations are within easy walking range. For most errands, driving is a must.
* 0 - 25 = Driving Only: Virtually no neighborhood destinations within walking range. You can walk from your house to your car!
How it Works
Walk ScoreTM uses a patent-pending algorithm to calculate the walkability of an address based on:
* The distance to walkable locations near an address.
* Calculating a score for each of these locations.
* Combining these scores into one easy to read Walk Score.
Read more about what makes a neighborhood walkable. We'd love to hear your feedback. Send us a suggestion!
How We Watch the City: Popularity and Online Maps
Microsoft Research
Danyel Fisher
ABSTRACT
One way of conceptualizing physical spaces is to look at
where people notice, remember, or note them. Computer-
assisted methods give us new tools based on implicit, rather
than explicit, data about how users have examined and
travelled online through cities. “Hotmap” is a tool that
visualizes how people have used maps.live.com, an
interactive mapping service, looking at what parts of the
maps they find most compelling.
CASEY J. DAWKINS
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Journal of Regional Science, Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 255-272, May 2007
Abstract:
This paper proposes a new spatial ordering index that that can be used to quantify the dependence of a given pattern of income segregation on the spatial arrangement of neighborhoods. Unlike other spatial measures of income segregation proposed in the literature, the spatial ordering index is less sensitive to the presence of outliers, satisfies the principle of transfers, and is flexible enough to quantify a variety of spatial patterns of segregation. The index can be interpreted in terms of the ratio of two covariances. Properties of the proposed measure are demonstrated using an example from the city of Baltimore, Maryland.
Accepted Paper Series
Suggested Citation
Dawkins, Casey J., "Space and the Measurement of Income Segregation" (2006-07). Journal of Regional Science, Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 255-272, May 2007 Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=981558 or DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9787.2007.00508.x
Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 26, No. 4, 404-414 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0739456X06298820
© 2007 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning
Exploring Changes in Income Clustering and Centralization during the 1990s
Casey J. Dawkins
Urban Affairs and Planning at Virginia Tech, Virginia Center for Housing Research
This article employs a new "spatial ordering index" to describe and explain changes in the degree of income clustering and centralization within U.S. metropolitan areas during the 1990s. The results suggest that while the spatial pattern of household income became more decentralized and less clustered during the 1990s, the patterns established as of 1990 were highly persistent over the decade. Factors associated with metropolitan area size and growth affected changes in both the degree of centralization and the degree of clustering. Although traditional determinants of suburbanization were associated with increases in income decentralization during the 1990s, densely developed cities with an increase in the percentage of white residents saw increases in income centralization during the decade. Furthermore, changes in the patterns observed were shaped by various policy influences, including the number of Low Income Housing Tax Credit units, urban containment policies, and the degree of local government fragmentation.
Key Words: economic segregation • spatial analysis • metropolitan governance • urban containment • growth management
Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 26, No. 4, 435-449 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0739456X06297860
© 2007 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning
The Sustainable Communities Experiment in the United States
Insights from Three Federal-Level Initiatives
Carla Chifos
School of Planning at the University of Cincinnati
This paper documents and analyzes a portion of the U.S. government's attempt to adopt the concept of sustainability after 1992. Numerous case studies of individual sustainable community development projects exist, although almost no literature describes the coordinated federal-level effort to create and implement a sustainable development policy from 1993 to 2000. Case studies of three prominent federal-level sustainable community programs are developed from twenty guided interviews and existing government documents. The analysis of these three cases reveals serious attempts to translate sustainability into federal programs and changes in agency cultures despite institutional barriers. Although the primary outcome of these efforts was a stronger framework for facilitation of planning at the federal level, it still remains unclear why planners were not more involved in this process.
Key Words: sustainable communities • federal policy • sustainable development • Clinton-Gore administration • President's Council on Sustainable Development
On November 16th, 2005, REBAR opened eyes worldwide by transforming a metered parking spot into a park. Locating a site that was underserved by public outdoor space, we installed a small, temporary park that provided nature, seating, and shade. By our calculations, we provided 24,000 square-foot-minutes of public open space that afternoon. See the video!
Since the initial PARK(ing) project was created we've been contacted by people worldwide. What began as a simple, playful idea has become a lively and visible symbol of the desire to reprogram the street and increase public open space in cities all over the planet.
In 2006, with support from The Trust for Public Land, we built upon this groundswell of interest and created an international event. PARK(ing) Day 2006 brought artists, designers, and activists together to create 47 PARKs in 13 Cities worldwide, including New York, London, and Rio de Janeiro. See our PARK(ing) Day 2006 page and the video!
In 2007, we will show how our temporary PARKs can become permanent new urban places and connect people with ways to transform their entire city's streetscape for a sustainable future.
Join artists, designers, and activists around the world who are peacefully demonstrating how to reduce congestion, clean the air, save energy, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and improve urban neighborhoods.Perpetual Motion Introduction
Mobility has always been the crux of where and how we live. Our cities, town, suburbs-even our houses-are largely the way they are because of transportation's demands on the environment. Given Dwell's interest in looking at domestic life through the lens of design, it seems fitting that we should explore the past, present, and future of transportation in the United States-country whose very existence and evolving fabric is based on its citizens' innate desire to keep on moving.
To tackle such a mammoth undertaking, we enlisted the help of intrepid adventurer and award-winning author Robert Sullivan. Amicably accepting the assignment, Sullivan agreed that the field research should be conducted in four parts-East, Midwest, West, and Southwest.
Paris Journal
A New French Revolution's Creed: Let Them Ride Bikes
By KATRIN BENNHOLD
PARIS, July 15 - About a dozen sweaty people pedaled bicycles up the Champs-Élysées on Sunday toward the Arc de Triomphe, as onlookers cheered.
These were not the leading riders of the Tour de France racing toward the finish line, but American tourists testing this city's new communal bike program.
"I'm never taking the subway again," said a beaming Justin Hill, 47, a real estate broker from Santa Barbara, Calif.
More than 10,600 of the hefty gray bicycles became available for modest rental prices on Sunday at 750 self-service docking stations that provide access in eight languages. The number is to grow to 20,600 by the end of the year.
The program, Vélib (for "vélo," bicycle, and "liberté," freedom), is the latest in a string of European efforts to reduce the number of cars in city centers and give people incentives to choose more eco-friendly modes of transport.
"This is about revolutionizing urban culture," said Pierre Aidenbaum, mayor of Paris's trendy third district, which opened 15 docking stations on Sunday. "For a long time cars were associated with freedom of movement and flexibility. What we want to show people is that in many ways bicycles fulfill this role much more today."
Users can rent a bike online or at any of the stations, using a credit or debit card and leave them at any other station.
by CINDY CHANG
April 4, 2005
New York Times
The Chinese restaurants on Eldridge Street just below Canal do a brisk lunchtime business with their fish-ball soup, duck noodles and dumplings laced with leeks. But the commodity exchanged most in this part of Chinatown is labor. Employment agencies line the narrow block, and even the one shoe store doubles as a jobs center.
Lacking English signs to mark them, the Eldridge Street agencies are impenetrable to non-Chinese speakers. Yet they supply Chinese restaurants throughout the Eastern United States with a limitless stream of cheap labor. An immigrant can walk into an agency on Eldridge Street one day, and board a bus bound for a job in Ohio or Minnesota the next.
"One of the things that's probably true is that the Chinese restaurant in your community or your suburb - there's a chance that person working there got their job in Chinatown," said Robert Weber, director of the Rebuild Chinatown Initiative, an economic development project. Since the Chinatown economy slowed after Sept. 11, many more of the listings have been for out-of-state jobs.
The Spontaneous City
Essay on planning policies favoring more/less planning and the relationship with land use and transportation. Focuses on "Spontaneous develoment" and "Spontaneous action."
Physical Description: ix, 310 p. ; 24 cm.
Publisher/ Date: London ; Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Sage Publications, 1995
LC Subjects: Municipal government.
Sociology, Urban.
Material Type: Book
Call Number: JS78 .T46 1995
Author Kantor, Paul; Savitch, H. V.; Haddock, Serena Vicari
Affiliation Fordham University [Kantor]; University of Louisville [Savitch]; University of Pavia (Italy) [Haddock]
Source Urban Affairs Review, vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 348-377, January 1997
Abstract
The authors suggest how regime politics is influenced in systematic ways by particular kinds of bargaining environments. They describe a theoretical framework designed to examine the interplay of local democratic development, market environments, and intergovernmental networks on regime dynamics in eight cities in Western Europe and the United States since the 1970s. The authors explain how structural forces influence critical aspects of local regimes, particularly their governing coalitions, means of public-private coordination, and prevailing policy agendas on economic development.
Open source. Open space. Open art. Open doors. Open questions. Open City?
Open Cities Toronto 2007 is a weekend-long web of conversation and celebration that asks: how do we collaboratively add more open to the urban landscape we share? What happens when people working on open source, public space, open content, mash up art, and open business work together? How do we make Toronto a magnet for people playing with the open meme?
You are invited to discuss, dance, debate, and download Toronto's potential to become an epicentre and an example of a community that thrives on openness. We've all chosen to live here for a reason - let's figure out how we can combine our talents to build a city-wide community of openness.
DOI: 10.1177/095624789801000201
© 1998 Environment and Urbanization
Sustainability is not enough
Peter Marcuse
Division of Urban Planning, School of Architecture and Planning, Avery Hall, Columbia University, NewYork 10027, New York; fax: (1) 212 864 0410; pm35@columbia.edu
This paper critically reviews the concept of sustainability, especially as it has come to be applied outside of environmental goals. It suggests "sustainability" should not be considered as a goal for a housing or urban programme - many bad programmes are sustainable - but as a constraint whose absence may limit the usefulness of a good programme. It also discusses how the promotion of "sustainability" may simply encourage the sustaining of the unjust status quo and how the attempt to suggest that everyone has common interests in "sustainable urban development" masks very real conflicts of interest.
Billions in the developing world are shifting from rural to urban areas, bringing poverty to dangerous new levels.
By Nicolas P. Retsinas, NICOLAS P. RETSINAS is the director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University and chairman of the board of directors for Habitat for Humanity International.
February 28, 2007
THE WORLD HAS reached a point of hyper-urbanization: 2007 marks the first year when more than half the global population is "urban," not "rural." Indeed, this is the era of the "mega-city" - metropolises of 10 million-plus. In 1950, only Tokyo and New York met that threshold. Today there are 20 mega-cities, including Mexico City, Karachi, Manila, Dhaka, Lagos, Jakarta and Chongqing.
This type of drastic population shift isn't without precedent. During the Industrial Revolution, concentrations of people in U.S. and European cities were part and parcel of a factory economy. But that economic and technological progress came with a price - decades of fetid slums, horrific child mortality, raging epidemic disease. This time around, with cities 10 times bigger and demand for workers uncertain, the costs could be exponentially larger.
In general, an optimist might cheer urbanization as a sign of modernization; Residents of developed countries are much more likely to live in cities than their counterparts in still-developing nations (74% vs. 43%). The city, after all, is the hub of culture, a magnet that draws artists, writers, musicians - the place where creative spirits create. Great cities have ballet troupes, opera companies, orchestras. The city is, likewise, the hub of industry, generating the bulk of most countries' gross domestic product. Most important, the city is the hub of ideas. The mingling of people spurs the intellectual innovation that fuels thriving societies, at least in the developed world.
The Politics of Play is a collaborative workshop inviting artists, sociologists, designers, game designers, urban planners... PEOPLE to come together in an expedition. The purpose of this journey is to foster collaborative networks in the city through the medium of play.
The workshop will take the form of an exchange and collective learning experience divided into 3 parts; research, experimentation and implementation.
Play can offer a common ground for people to meet and exchange.
Almost everyone can play a game. The term "playing around" infers impermanence or a format for a deferred stance on an issue which offers up a way to let down ones guard. Often times this provides a sense of freedom that cannot be found in a sanctioned panel discussion, meeting or class room. Far more than humor, there is the play of ideas, the playfulness of free experimentation, the playfulness of free association and the play of paradigm shifting that are as common to scientific experiment as to pranks.
The Politics of Play is a workshop conceived by Amy Franceschini and Myriel Milicevic. The workshop serves as a plaform for research; sociological, urban studies, and game theory. The workshop was premiered at Mal au Pixel in Paris in April 2006.
Fletcher Street
Photographs by Martha Camarillo
Deep in the heart of Philadelphia, past row houses and vacant lots, run-down playgrounds and dilapidated schools, is a little place called Fletcher Street. It has everything one would expect to find down an alley in the ghetto, with one addition: horses. The men and boys of Fletcher Street have used their passion for riding and bonds with their rides to build their and their community's sense of worth. They describe their passion for horses as having kept them from the temptations of street life. Fletcher Street by Martha Camarillo documents the lives of these men and the boys they mentor, who board their horses in abandoned houses or makeshift stables, and ride them through the streets of Philly.
Camarillo's work is valuable not only because it illuminates a fascinating new aspect of culture, but also because it challenges those who see it. Her photographs force viewers to confront their own preconceptions of sport as representative of social status, and race as a demarcation of class. The power of Camarillo's exploration of this underrepresented community is based on the strength of the men themselves: urban horsemen who have ridden away from the 'hood and toward a better future.
Martha Camarillo is a self-taught photographer from Texas. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Telegraph, Numéro, Journal, i-D, and many others. Her first book, Remote Photos (Janvier/Léo Scheer, 2005), a collaboration with artist Avena Gallagher, was an in-depth look at the identity of teenage male and female models, made by giving the models themselves disposable cameras to be used by whomever they saw fit. Work from the project was exhibited at Léo Scheer Gallery, Paris, in 2005. Camarillo was the winner of the Hyères Festival 2001, and the 2002 Art Director's Award.
Horses/Photography/Urban Cowboys
Hardcover, 10 x 11.7 inches, 128 pages, 65 four-color photographs
ISBN 1-57687-328-5
$39.95 / Cnd $53.50
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Call#: Van Pelt Library HN80.C5 W55 2006
Call#: Van Pelt Library HD2346.U52 C535 2006
"Squzzzzz, Squazzzzz, Squzzzz, Squawzzz."
One day I was riding the bus down Chestnut Street. About a block before my stop the Duck Lady got on squawking away,
"Squazzzz, Squizzzz”.
She didn't pay the fare and the bus driver didn't challenge her. She headed right toward me! Stopped directly in front of me and in a clear voice said,
"Excuse me, may I sit there, I am very handicapped”.
Posted on Wed, Sep. 20, 2006
Expansion for Dunkin' Donuts - and Philly
By Harold Brubaker
Inquirer Staff Writer
Philadelphia dieters, beware!
Dunkin' Donuts plans to add 250 locations in the Philadelphia region by 2010.
In San Francisco, a Plague of Stickers Opens a New Front in the Graffiti War
By JESSE McKINLEY
Published: September 17, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 16 — One of the most wanted men in San Francisco — if he is a man — has no known name, no known mug shot and one very efficient sticker machine.
For several months, the police say, someone has been plastering the city’s walls, public phones and newspaper boxes with postcard-size stickers reading “BNE” in big black letters. Sometimes the stickers also have Japanese script that translates to “visit” or “come to.”
EXHIBITION GUIDE- PDF
Architecture and Justice maps criminal justice statistics to make visible the geography of incarceration and return in New York, Phoenix, New Orleans, Wichita, and New Haven, prompting new ways of understanding the spatial dimension of an area of public policy with profound implications for American cities.
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The Architectural League presents
Architecture and Justice
September 15—October 28, 2006
The Urban Center, 457 Madison Avenue
Luxury Condos Arrive in Chinatown
By VIVIAN S. TOY
AT one corner of Mott and Hester Streets, sidewalk bins at a Chinese grocery overflow with dried shrimp, and a bakery sells sweets filled with red bean paste, while across the street, lunch menus at the Original Vincent’s Restaurant promote the day’s linguine specials.
But there is a new sign at this intersection, which many people now consider to be the heart of Chinatown. It reads: “Hester Gardens, Luxury Condominiums.”
Have a Seat is a very simple and generous gesture towards reclaiming public space in Williamsburg (Brooklyn). During the night the artist affixed a dozen “seats” to the "no parking" and "stop" sign posts implanted in the sidewalk (map of the seats).
The Nation In Numbers
Where the Brains Are
America’s educated elite is clustering in a few cities— and leaving the rest of the country behind
by Richard Florida
Guest post by Michael Manville, UCLA on Randal Crane's blog "Planning Research"
-what
-how
-why
DOI: 10.1177/0096144205284400
© 2006 SAGE Publications
Neither Fight Nor Flight
Urban Synagogues in Postwar Philadelphia
Jordan Stanger-Ross
University of Victoria
This article uses case studies of two Philadelphia synagogues to argue that postwar cities remained places of opportunity for creative local institutions and that the geographic flexibility of synagogues did not necessarily entail flight from declining urban areas. After their North Philadelphia Jewish residential enclave dissipated, Mikveh Israel and Rodeph Shalom recast the meaning of community and membership to accommodate their dispersed congregations. Rather than remaining neighborhood synagogues, Mikveh Israel and Rodeph Shalom connected members dispersed across the metropolitan area who were committed to preserving their religious institutions at the center of the city. Postwar Jewish community at these two synagogues developed metropolitan contours.
Key Words: Jewish • synagogues • North Philadelphia • urban decline • geography
Call#: Van Pelt Library HN80.P5 D58
The Next American City
PHILADELPHIA: Gambling on Philadelphia's Future: Can Casinos Fit into a Big City Downtown?
by Joanne Aitken, Harris Steinberg, and Elise Vider
New Take on Public Housing: Destroying It to Save It
By FERNANDA SANTOS
Blight, Like Beauty, Can Be in the Eye of the Beholder
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Of all the real estate jargon, bureaucratic buzzwords and plain old insults exchanged over the proposed Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, no term has evoked quite such unruly passion as “blighted.”
Call#: Van Pelt Library HV4028 .M38 1993
Reconstructing Chinatown
Ethnic Enclave, Global Change
Jan Lin
ISBN 0-8166-2905-6
An exploration of this fascinating community as a window on globalization.
In the American popular imagination, Chinatown is a mysterious and dangerous place, clannish and dilapidated, filled with sweatshops, vice, and organized crime. In this well-written and engaging volume, Jan Lin presents a real-world picture of New York City's Chinatown, countering this "orientalist" view by looking at the human dimensions and the larger forces of globalization that make this vital neighborhood both unique and broadly instructive.
Using interviews with residents, firsthand observation, archival research, and U.S. census data, Lin delivers an informed, reliable picture of Chinatown today. Lin claims that to understand contemporary ethnic neighborhoods like this one we must dispense with notions of monolithic "community." When he looks at Chinatown, Lin sees a neighborhood that is being rebuilt, both literally and economically. Rather than a clannish and unified peer group, he sees substantial class inequality and internal social conflict. There is also social change, most visibly manifested in dramatic episodes of collective action by sweatshop workers and community activists and in the growing influence of Chinatown's denizens in electoral politics.
Call#: University Museum Library Desk VHS TX945.5.S54 F56 1989
The New York Times
July 3, 2006
Top Executives Return Offices to Manhattan
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
from wiki on - Psychogeography is "the study of specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals," according to Guy Debord's Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography.
What's wrong with the buildings Frank Gehry wants to put in my neighborhood?
By Jonathan Lethem
Posted Monday, June 19, 2006, at 12:14 PM ET
Less Housing for Residents of Average Pay, Report Says
By JANNY SCOTT
Published: June 16, 2006
The report, to be released today, for the first time puts hard numbers on a cost squeeze that has intensified with the real estate boom. The researchers found that the number of apartments affordable to households earning about $32,000 a year, or 80 percent of the median household income in the city, has dropped by 205,000 in just three years.
June 14, 2006
Square Feet
In Major Projects, Agreeing Not to Disagree
By TERRY PRISTIN
...
In New York, however, some critics are wondering if this trend is threatening to distort the planning process. They say the danger is that local groups will agree not to oppose the projects in exchange for favors that may be unrelated to the project's impact on the neighborhood.
...
Critics said the compromise proposal would not go far enough to curtail abuse. Builders and municipalities lauded the bill, which a sponsor expects will pass.
By Elisa Ung
Inquirer Trenton Bureau
TRENTON - After a four-month review of how the most densely populated state allows the seizure of land for private redevelopment, key Democratic lawmakers are working on legislation that would tighten the criteria for exercising eminent domain and require more public notification. Builders and the New Jersey State League of Municipalities cheered the proposal, while property owners, Republicans, and the state's public advocate said it did not go far enough to curb eminent-domain abuse. "The real question is: What will this do to stop the abuse taking place now? And the answer is: Nothing," said Bill Potter, a Princeton lawyer who heads the Coalition Against Eminent Domain Abuse. ...
Call#: Van Pelt Library HG3756.U54 W534 2004
Call#: Fine Arts Library HT177.W3 W55 1988
Call#: Van Pelt Library GN492 .P66 1991
Call#: Van Pelt Library PS461.J6 W54 1983
blog by Robert Neuwirth
I'm a writer who spent two years living in squatter communities in four continents. These neighborhoods--which dominate most of the cities of the developing world--are vibrant and energetic, but horribly misunderstood. My new book, Shadow Cities, is an attempt to humanize these maligned settlements. My articles on cities, politics, and economic issues have appeared in many publications, including The Nation, The Village Voice, Newsday, The New York Times, Metropolis, and City Limits. Before becoming a reporter, I worked as a community organizer and studied philosophy. I live in New York City.
Call#: Van Pelt Library HN80.P5 P487
Measuring urban sprwal from space