I find urban studies fascinating, which is perhaps why it was a concentration back when I was in school. To me--perhaps because I have lived in big cities most of my life--finding ways to reform city government, bring transparency, better deliver services and improve the quality of life in metropolitan areas is a passion, because I think there are so many possibilities (especially with today's technology) for making people's lives better by rising up to meet these challenges.
This is why I am thrilled to be working with the City Forward initiative. What is City Forward? It is a tool that pulls public data from urban centers on different issues (user specified) and displays it in customizable graphs.
For example, users can create an 'exploration' for important environmental issues such as water usage in multiple cities, and then have it displayed in charts that will visually present the data in a way that people can understand it. These charts allow anyone to make a case or tell a story about what one city or many cities are doing to improve in an areas such as this one, and what others are neglecting.
In other words, in addition to being groundbreaking in its potential applications, its a pretty cool tool for improving government transparency and letting people access public records in a useful, understandable way.
You can go to the site and see what explorations have already been done in cities across the world, and come up with some of your own. And you can encourage your city to share data with the initiative, to fight for the kind of improvements we all need, and quite frankly, deserve.
This is just provides another way to bring some light into the often dark corners of government, while improving our everyday lives. Not a bad thing in today's world, for sure.
There is a good piece in this month's edition of Atlantic Magazine in which Witold Rybczynski, a professor of urbanism at UPenn, argues the case for "returning to cities" if we really want to fight climate change. In it, he argues that our response to climate change has been too oriented towards "accessorizing" green features and less towards behavioral, systemic change. He also argues what we know- that living in cities creates a far smaller carbon footprint, and that a skyscraper with zero green features beats a suburban office park with solar panels, because of the people working in it and how they get to the office.
I think it's a very good point. The attitude towards "green", in my experience, has become more an attempt to impress your peers through accessorizing than actual change. Telling your neighbors you drive a hybrid, bragging about slapping a solar panel on your suburban roof, etc. are common things I hear among my friends and back home. But what I've never heard is anyone saying that in the name of battling climate change, they're going to move from their free-standing suburban house that consumes an immense amount of energy, complete with water and chemical-guzzling lawn, and give up the other trappings of suburban life. That is Rybczynski's central argument- if we're really going to take a bite out of climate change, we need (a) more buildings like multi-family walkups that can be dense enough to support public transit nearby (b) people willing to change their already set-in lifestyles.
Two points I want to make. The first is that (a) can always be done- more zoning for multi-family walkups, etc. Incentivizing it is another story. My boyfriend got a tax credit for purchasing his Prius- why shouldn't there be something similar for those who live in environments in which it is more likely to exert a low-carbon footprint (walking to the convenience store, using public transit to get to work, etc.)? It will take a whole new style of thinking for legislators and the general public. The popular approach to climate change is to accessorize, not to completely change where you live and how to get from points A to points B. And making an argument for rewarding people for living in cities via tax credits could raise a fair amount of opposition.
I also think there's a challenge of the audience for this, which brings me to (b). My parents have lived in the same Buffalo suburban 3-bedroom home with a gorgeous veggie garden for over 25 years, like living there, like driving their own cars, etc. Asking them, at their age, to sell their home and move to a hi-rise in the city of Buffalo (which has had negative population growth since 1960 for a reason), give up the backyard garden, take the bus to work when they've always driven, etc. just isn't happening. Nor should every suburbanite be asked to. I doubt my parents are the only ones who feel this way.
I think people just out of college and deciding where to live are one market. For instance, I have two friends (a couple) from college who are now finishing med school. They both are getting jobs in DC proper, but contemplating buying a house out in Virginia, not near a Metrorail stop. I'm trying to convince them to buy one of the many unsold condos here in DC instead, and be able to walk to most of the places they need to go. This kind of audience is one target to commit to a low-carbon lifestyle.
In other words, incentivize and target an audience from the very start instead of having to ask them to give up their lifestyle 40 years later. I think older families are the ones you can get to buy more locally-grown produce and switch off lights more- useful, but small, steps. Recent graduates and similar audiences are the ones to go after to make the big changes Rybczynski is arguing are critical.
When I sat down with him last summer, Frank Jackson, the soft-spoken mayor of Cleveland, looked puzzled when I asked if the Republican Party could ever formulate an urban agenda. Republicans know very well, he finally responded, that urban issues are important. But stating them "is not part of the Republican agenda." After all, he wondered, how could a party so supportive of a destructive war in Iraq talk about rebuilding urban centers?
Jackson and I were talking during the final stretch of the presidential campaign. Barack Obama was about to energize urbanists throughout the country with his "Metropolitan Strategy for Urban America", unveiled at the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors. In his speech, Obama referred to cities as engines of prosperity, rather than warrens of poverty and homelessness, and soon complemented the speech with an "urban agenda" that has now been adopted, complete with an executive Office of Urban Affairs, as administration policy.
Meanwhile, Senator McCain was silent about urban issues. When he was finally asked a question about inner-city crime, the Christian Science Monitornoted that the candidate "expressed sympathy" and then "gave a long, winding answer that touched on the international reach of gangs and drugs and the need to seal the borders." McCain thus faltered even when asked about inner-city crime, the favorite conservative "urban ailment".
Against this backdrop, Jack Kemp should be remembered as the lone conservative voice to speak about the importance of cities at least since Nixon's New Federalism turned the federal government's back on urban areas. As George H.W. Bush's Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Kemp advocated a federal urban policy that encouraged homeownership for low- and moderate-income families and used tax breaks to reinvigorate depressed urban areas through Enterprise Zones. Bush largely silenced his HUD Secretary, while critics protested Kemp's overemphasis on homeownership.
Wendall Cox, writing for NewGeography.com, can see the future of urban development, and he doesn't like it. In an article called, "Enough 'Cowboy' Greenhouse Gas Reduction Policies", Mr. Cox rails against the efforts that some states are making toward addressing our land-use patterns. In particular, Mr. Cox takes aim at California's SB 375, which has the aim of creating communities that offer their residents a choice in transportation modes, thereby reducing the state's dependence on automobile travel and oil, and the emission of greenhouse gases.
Mr. Cox basically takes offense at the state's efforts to create higher-density, mixed-use, walkable, and transit-accessible communities. He states:
Higher densities are likely to worsen the quality of life in California, while doing little, if anything to reduce GHG emissions.
This is based on two assumptions: 1) that higher density equals more traffic congestion and 2) that higher density equals higher housing prices.
The selection of Adolfo Carrion, Bronx Borough President, to lead The White House Office of Urban Policy (WHOUP) is particularly important as the federal government unleashes the $787 billion economic stimulus package President Obama signed into law on Tuesday. The effectiveness of the stimulus package depends on the ability of federal officials to select among a range of public works projects identified by mayors and other metro officials according to these criteria: the speed with which they can be undertaken; the type, availability, and location of the workers they require; and their short-term and long-term economic effects. WHOUP must coordinate the federal government’s communication with officials at the city and metro level where most of these stimulus projects will be executed in the coming months.
Obama’s cities chief will have the opportunity to show the country that urban policy is uniquely about smart investment, careful planning, and effective policy design rather than wasteful spending on unnecessary projects—that it’s about harnessing the resources concentrated in metro areas, where a vast majority of Americans live, by maximizing present value and extracting future potential.
People burning to death in fires that normally would be prevented.
Crime increasing because cops are laid off.
People literally stacked on top of each other in prisons, despite court orders that it is unconstitutional.
More and more homeless people on the street.
Libraries, many times the only way for low-income people to connect to the internet and access a world of knowledge, closed.
Trash collecting for weeks in the summer, leading to more rat infestations.
We can talk all we want about abstract ideas. But as Washington fiddles, and worries more about bankers than about us, that is the reality that was just announced in Philadelphia. The stories are similar all over the US. Will we do something about it, or not?
As a back story, in November, due to falling tax receipts and a pension fund that hit rock bottom, Philadelphia Mayor Mike Nutter announced he was going to cut 1 billion dollars from our five-year budget plan. It meant some layoffs, services being stopped, efficiencies searched, parks funding cut, and an attempt to shutter about 10 libraries.
People went berserk, especially at the library closures. A bunch of people fought the library closures specifically, and in what seemed like a miracle, a judge sided with us, and enjoined the Mayor from closing them, saving our neighborhood treasures. It was a small victory.
This year's presidential campaign has not involved the "urban decline" rhetoric that rallied politicians - and policymakers - to the cause of cities in the mid 1960s and late 1970s. Instead, as Alex MacGillis pointed out in Sunday's WaPo, Senator Obama
"has adopted the framing increasingly favored by many mayors and urban-policy types - promoting America's cities based on their strengths, not their failings."
This framing involves a slight shift of perspective from urban cores to metro areas. In many ways, this optimistic view of cities as nestled within metros (which aren't as politically, or racially, charged as cities) is productive. Economics backs up the sunny view, as MacGillis notes, with the majority of the nation's GDP generated and of its population and jobs located in metro areas.
But the champions of the metro perspective fail to defend the political relationship - the partnership - that is necessary between the federal government and cities. In interviewing mayors from cities across the country, I have consistently heard that cities will not truly prosper until mayors are provided more substantive opportunities to influence federal policy. This influence would extend beyond calls for more funds for the CDBG and COPS programs to provide mayors and other parochial officials occasions to highlight model local policies and coordinate with state officers and, indeed, with other officials inside their metro area.
Mayors have already joined together in ad hoc groups to meet Kyoto Protocol targets and in official organizations like the Conference of Mayors, but they have little formal means to influence federal policy. If mayors are heard at all, they are heard to be begging for money; if they receive money, they often receive too little or are constrained in its use. Providing mayors a platform for influence, exchange, and coordination - similar to Senator Obama's White House Office of Urban Policy - would capitalize on the economic power of metro areas while restoring urban policy to its proper place in national discourse. At its best, this would mean strengthening the power and authority of mayors at the federal level--something that Obama's transition team should embrace.
In today's WSJ, June Kronholz points out that few mayors become president. They have often been overlooked when they should be empowered. Today, mayors nationwide overwhelmingly want the next presidential administration to reverse that trend.
A recent interview DMI's MayorTV did with Mayor Dannel Malloy of Stamford, CT explores the much-needed political partnership between cities and the federal government. Check it out.
As final preparations for the last presidential debate are made - water glasses weighed and secret memoranda consulted - both candidates have revamped their economic plans for the economic crisis now gripping the country.
McCain was uncertain, at first, about whether to release a revised plan. But even after deciding that certain "economic news and conditions" demanded such action, he seems to have omitted several critical elements from the proposal. No, if you were concerned, he remembered to include a cut in the capital gains tax. And yes, if you're worried he was going soft, he will employ a surge strategy to prevent foreclosures.
(One of the most devastating consequences of Bush Administration policy--not just the financial meltdown we are now experiencing--has been the systematic neglect of state and local governments, which have suffered two of the worst financial crunches in history under Bush. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
The financial crisis has dug in its heels and Treasury's plan to buy up troubled assets hasn't been able to dislodge them. There have been numerous reports that the crisis has spread outward from Wall Street to afflict auto dealerships and the commercial paper that businesses and public institutions use to meet payroll. But when The New York Timesreported last week that cities, states, and local governments are having difficulty in bond markets - stoking fears that infrastructure projects, services, and payrolls will have to be canceled or scaled back - MayorTV decided to set off to several cities to ask mayors how the financial downturn is affecting them.
Our first stop was Stamford, Connecticut where Mayor Dannel Malloy was anything but optimistic about the economy.
This post was written by Harry Moroz and cross-posted from the DMI blog.
"We need to imagine just what a clean, safe, efficient, dynamic, stimulating, just city would look like concretely - we need those images to confront critically our masters with what they should be doing - and just this critical imagination of the city is weak."
Campaign websites - like town hall speeches, candidate adverts, and whisky drinking - are fair game when analyzing the presidential candidates. Indeed, when a few big picture issues like health care or the Iraq War dominate campaign conversation, these websites can be the curious voter's only entrée into a candidate's views on niche issues. Likewise, when the ravenous punditocracy belabors the collective consciousness with stories of vitriolic pastors and gas tax holidays, the campaign websites can be the honest voter's only escape to meaningful policy, disassociated from reality as it may be.
That is why I feel so comfortable applauding Senator Obama's recent addition of an "Urban Policy" tab to the dropdown menu in the upper-left-hand section of the horizontal toolbar labeled "Issues" on his campaign website. In fact, Obama had several months ago released an initial urban plan that called for a White House Office of Urban Policy, "promise neighborhoods" to combat concentrated poverty, increased money for reverse commuters, and an affordable housing trust fund. Senator Clinton, too, had released a plan for "revitalizing our cities" that called for increased funding for early education, green buildings and green jobs, and infrastructure. Both candidates' plans would revive helpful programs that have been left, as Mayor Shirley Franklin of Atlanta might put it, to shrivel up and die. Fair enough.
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