Its been well over a year since I have blogged on here. I've spent the last year dedicated every spare moment to writing a thesis. In the process, I have gained much needed knowledge and developed new perspectives on the built environment and how others perceive it. I'm excited to see the new direction this blog will go in and I'm just as excited to see what new perspectives readers will bring to it!

-LJ

Where Are the Resources? Where Are the Leaders?

Recently, I have been working on some ideas that have been swirling around in my head. As part of my basic research, I did a simple Google search for black community development organizations that are nationwide. The results were abysmal; most of the pages that showed up were articles or pages of loosely related content. Ok, so maybe my search was too broad, so I keyed in a search for Black Community Developers. One reliable source came up and that was small development company that specific to the city of Little Rock in Arkansas. So what is the big deal you may ask?

Well.....

Let's take a look at our communities; those communities in major cities that are overlooked, neglected, and downtrodden are generally majority minority communities that are lacking the resources that they need to strive. Now, let's think back to the Civil Rights Era and the organizations that existed with the sole purpose of fighting for equality; the NAACP, the National Urban League, Congress of Racial Equality, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, National Council of Negro Women, and other local and regional organizations all existed with the purpose of seeking a better way of life for minorities. So today, in 2010, what organizations are in the national limelight that are actively fighting for better communities for minorities? What organization is taking strides in promoting healthy, livable, walkable, sustainable, and just communities across the country? Better yet, what leader(s) are tackling these issues? What leaders do our communities have on the Martin Luther King/DuBois level?

What is it going to take to get back to that level of activism?

Rebuilding Haiti, Land Use, Density and Sprawl

 read this article this morning from an older issue of the New York Times entitled, A Plan to Spur Growth Away From Haiti’s Capital .  This article talks about a plan that was unveiled a few months ago that will rebuild Haiti by decentralizing its urban core through land use practices designed to create smaller urban and rural cores.

Based upon my American planning knowledge, the first thing I thought was how backwards does this sound? Decentralizing the city? American cities are on a rapid decline; populations in the city are decreasing while suburban populations are increasing. In Haiti, the expected growth for Port-au-Prince is targeted to hit 6,000,000 in the next 15  years. The population is expected to double from its 3,000,000 inhabitants now.

Upon further investigation, this plan is in fact very fitting giving the condition of the country and the surrounding environmental concerns:

Prepared by a group of urban planners from the Haitian government agency responsible for the country’s development, the plan is built around a bold central idea: to redistribute large parts of the population of Port-au-Prince to smaller Haitian cities, many of them at a safe distance from areas most vulnerable to natural disaster. In the process the plan would completely transform Haiti from a country dominated by a single metropolis to what the planners call a network of smaller urban “growth poles.”

As part of this plan come an array of new zoning and land-use regulations that will transform the capitol and the country, plans for a light rail system, a waterfront park in Port-au-Prince, and smaller public spaces throughout the region.

As with most plans, these ideas are great but the crucial component will be finding funding and political support in a country that is still on its knees six months later.

Minorities in Architecture and Planning

America has made great strides in equality in this country. We have more minorities than ever employed in fields that were traditionally segregated. We have more minorities in top positions in Fortune 500 companies. We even have a minority president. But does this mean that we have reached that ideal level of equality?


In the article, Blacklisted: Is failing to plan with minority architects, in fact, planning to fail?, the author discusses the lack of representation of minorities in the architecture, planning, and landscape architecture related fields. Even though it makes sense to have minority planners and developers represent their own communities that is not what is happening. Planning can be very political in nature and because of that, there exist certain barriers that are harder to overcome.

Minorities in these professions have to prove themselves worthy before they can become successful professionals. Students who attend HBCUs are faced with a different set of problems. Lack of resources, lack of professional guidance, lack of modern equipment and a host of others are all problems that are guaranteed to arise during a student's academic career at an HBCU. Tuskegee University, a program founded on the belief that architectural mastery can combat oppression, lost its accreditation.

The battle is a continuous battle to fight for architectural, planning, and development equality if there isn't a loud enough, and skilled enough collective voice within these communities.

Transferring from an HBCU Graduate Program in CREP, I experienced these same flaws and shortcomings in my program. I transferred to another institution and have seen a remarkable difference in the quality of resources given to us to work with.
My thoughts: Before we can adequately address the discrepancies in minority communities, we should address the educational foundation that is being laid for the profession.

Urban Decay.....How do we handle it?

Let's chat about Urban Decay for a minute... and no I'm not reffering to the pretty eyeshadows you can buy at Sephora

+What is Urban Decay: the process whereby a previously functioning city, or part of a city, falls into disrepair and decrepitude. It may feature deindustrialization, depopulation or changing population, economic restructuring, abandoned buildings, high local unemployment, fragmented families, political disenfranchisement, crime, and a desolate, inhospitable city landscape.


Does this sound like a familar place to you?

Baltimore, once a thriving port city off of the Chesapeake Bay faced a decline after its period of deindustrialization. Once the second largest city in the nation with close to one million persons, this city now has around 650,00 residents. The mass exodus has left us with some visual examples of urban decay:

Abandoned rowhomes, abandoned and boarded up city blocks, garbage filled lots...These are the marks of Baltimore's City Urban Decay

Just about eery major city has some form of Urban Decay: Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, New York, Miami, Tampa, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Tampa, Dallas, and the list goes on and on.

The sad thing about Urban Decay is that many of these areas were once thriving communities with middle/working class citizens. The decisions of city and local officials in the planning department, highway construction, economic recessions, massive job layoffs, plant and industrial facility closures, sprawl and suburbanization, and crime are all contributing to factors to Urban Decay.

Until these areas are revitalized and redeveloped, how do we handle the linger populations in these areas? How do we ensure that despite their surroundings that they still have the same opportunities and resources as those in suburbia? How do we ensure that the children growing up still recieve a quality education? How do we ensure that the psychological effects of growing up in these conditions are addressed?

Is demolishing these areas to the ground and relocating the residence a viable solution? Is a redevelopment strategy that will change these areas to bustling commercial/retail/residential/mixed-use corridors the best option?What happends when these who live here are displaced?

Just because you change the facade and appearance of urban decay with trendy architecture and innovative planning strategies doesn't mean that we have addressed the sociological and mental issues assosciated with decay....

Your thoughts???

Oil Spill... Poor Planning is the blame?

100 days. We are nearing 100 days of this oil-spill crisis. First it was BP's fault, then it was the government's fault, then it was Obama's fault, now its the fault of City Planning. I recently read a post on Planetizen and Vishaan Chakrabarti claims that sprawl has encouraged a reliance on oil, which in turn has created this tragedy. Pause....Rewind....

I agree that sprawl has contributed to negative land-use  and sustainability practices in recent decades but is it a fair assesment to say that this oil spill tragedy and poor planning practices are related?

Vishaan Chakrabarti states: "Do we have the vision to recognize that we have seen the enemy, and it is the suburban house? Do we have the will to embrace high-density living as the only solution, the only land use that limits our energy use, our healthcare costs, our vulnerability to petro-dictators, and our free fall into a sprawling national deficit?"

The enemy according to Chakrabarti is the suburban house... He believes that the suburban house is now the root of all evil and its downfall is of course the only way to fix our national state of affairs.

Is his point valid? or he is extrapolating these issues on planners just to mask the larger issue(s) at hand?

Word of the Day: Gentrification

Gentrification. What is it? Who does it affect?

There are many definitions of gentrification:

+ "...the socio-cultural changes in an area resulting form wealthier people buying housing property in a less prosperous community (Wikipedia)

+ "The buying and renovation of houses and stores in deteriorated urban neighborhoods by upper- or middle-income families or individuals, thus improving property values but often displacing low-income families and small businesses (Dictionary.com)

There is no place in America that is exempt from being subject to gentrification. Places such as Chicago, New York City, and Washington DC have some infamous gentrification projects going on.

Some say the gentrification process is detrimental to a neighborhood because it changes the character of the neighborhood while others support the cause because it brings much needed change to the community.

Here is a short article and short video.. Check 'em out. Then post how you feel on gentrification.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/08/AR2010010803606.html