Subject: Neighborhood Change
Last month I wrote about why Project Rebuild is basically a bad idea, and why the Obama administration is making a mistake by trying to refloat it once again, rather than taking a fresh look at the question. This month…
"'Do nothing' is not an option." So says Jerry Flach, construction project director at Paterson Habitat for Humanity, of the need to take action on New Jersey's vacant and abandoned properties as means for revitalization and stabilization in the state's…
Doug Henwood, editor/publisher of Left Business Observer, has an interesting piece in the Nation this week that argues that gentrification and displacement in New York City are aided and abetted, and really even driven, by plans developed by bodies like…
When I worked as a local newspaper reporter, it was frustrating to see community members with ideas of how to transform or beautify their town stopped at the onset by a puzzling municipal process or other access issues. Usually the…
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Washington Ave St. Louis (credit: Google Earth) As I continue to wrestle with the future of cities and urban neighborhoods, and about how to go about reversing the decline that seems to face so many of them, I find myself…
There's an utterly fascinating recent post by John Roman on the Metrotrends Blog of the Urban Institute called "Gentrification Will Reduce Crime and Violence--But Only if Poor People Stay." The thesis is that if you take a public health approach…
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If there was some radio silence on Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker's Twitter feed on Tuesday, it was only because he was delivering the Democratic Party platform as the DNC kicked off its three-day convention this week in Charlotte, NC.…
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The Poverty & Race Research Action Council has received a number of inquiries on the widely publicized report from the Manhattan Institute, "The End of the Segregated Century," that looks at declining levels of racial segregation in American cities and…
Guernica, a self-described “magazine of art and politics,” has a fascinating essay by Wayne State University professor John Patrick Leary about the “ruin porn” being made in Detroit, and the backlash boosterism to it.
About the “Detroit Laments” being produced by outsiders seeking meaning in Detroit’s crumbing grandeur, Leary says:
“One often finds oneself asking of . . . all ruin photographs, first, ‘What happened?’ followed swiftly by, down to their lack of interest in the human inhabitants of the city. But it’s a bit more than that. These photos of uninhabited ruined spaces do little more than confirm what the most casual observer already knows about Detroit and cities like it.”
He explores the lack of context, history, and real people in how these ruins are usually presented, and argues that “Despite their differences, the common problem with many of the Lamenters and Utopians is that “What’s your point?” This comes partly from the awkwardness of the photographers’ aestheticism and postmodern detachment, which jars with the social violence of the history being depicted, and it’s partly both see Detroit as an exception to the contemporary United States, rather than as one of its exemplary places.” more
The University of Pennsylvania is well-known as a leader in community-university partnerships, and especially the kind that actually try to build community wealth. Under the leadership of Judith Rodin, now president of the Rockefeller Foundation, Penn responded to a public safety and disinvestment crisis in its surrounding neighborhoods by looking outward rather than retreating inward—through not just development, but also economic inclusion initiatives such as local hiring, local contracting, and local purchasing, plus incentives for faculty to purchase homes in West Philadelphia.
John A. Fry was executive vice president of Penn under Rodin from 1995 to 2002, and participated heavily in the Penn Compact, as it was called. After a stint at Franklin & Marshall college, Fry has taken a position as president of Drexel College, a large commuter campus and a neighbor of Penn’s.
Fry is looking to apply some of the lessons of Penn’s approach to support Drexel’s surrounding neighborhoods and ameliorate the effect of Drexel’s recent rapid growth, which has led to an influx of poorly maintained student rental housing.
Revitalization strategies based on anchor institutions, like Penn’s, or like Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperatives, seem to be getting less attention in the current crisis-focused climate, but it seems like they are if anything, even more crucial in a time of misguided federal austerity and neighborhood destabilization. It will be interesting to see how the combination of Drexel and Penn takes off, and whether or how it will be integrated with other community development efforts in the city.
Are you from Philly? What do think are the promises and the challenges of Drexel’s new goals?
(Photo by connery.cepeda, CC BY-NC-ND) more
As we reflect on the five years that have passed since Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, we can observe both progress and much, much left to be done. Speaking at Xavier University yesterday, President Obama spoke for many when he…
The Urbanophile, Aaron Renn, has an interesting new post about how American suburbs, particularly inner-ring suburbs, are being revitalized by immigrant populations. His focus is on his home region of Indianapolis, but the photos he presents and the stories he recounts could just as easily be set in Wheaton, Rockville or Annandale near my own home turf of Washington, DC.
Aaron’s photo-essay suggests that, although the types of suburban retrofits urged by new urbanist thinkers such as June Williamson, Ellen Dunham-Jones and Galina Tahchieva would in many cases be appropriately holistic and elegant, they are also hard to establish and fund. As a result, what is happening in many vulnerable suburban communities, instead, is a sort of organic economic revitalization driven by immigrant communities, establishing new, often thriving small businesses (as well as residential communities) within the existing suburban fabric. more
This is the final installment of my miniseries (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) about Cincinnati’s remarkable Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, potentially a national model for smart, green revitalization. The reason that revitalizing Over-the-Rhine should be just as important to environmentalists…
This was going to be the final installment of my miniseries about Cincinnati’s remarkable Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, but I’m on too much of a roll to finish today. (Or, as my man Van would put it, “it’s too late to stop…
Last week I wrote the first installment of my miniseries about Cincinnati’s remarkable Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. As I wrote then, this distinct and historic quarter adjacent to Cincinnati’s downtown is full of promise but bears considerable scars from decades of disinvestment,…
Cincinnati’s historic and very centrally located Over-the-Rhine neighborhood is poised to become one of America’s greatest revitalization stories, in the process creating a national exemplar of green, sustainable development. But a lot of things will need to happen in the…
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The following is a letter to the editor I submitted to The New York Times: The Times’ Aug. 8 article, “Housing Program Moves Poor to the Suburbs, and Tensions Follow,” about which David Varady has written on Rooflines, is irresponsible…
In the 1970s, New Brunswick, NJ was struggling. Like other New Jersey cities experiencing the hangover of race riots of the 1960s, the schools were in decline, white flight began to set in, and all of a sudden, the Hub…
Sweat pours down Reginald “Trigger” Smith’s face as he cleans out a storage unit squeezed next to three FEMA trailers on his lot in the Lower Ninth Ward, one of the New Orleans neighborhoods most devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
He is living in one of the trailers, a cramped space filled to the brim with the paraphernalia of his career in movie and music production. One of the trailers is still brand new and unlived in. Since FEMA announced earlier this year that high levels of formaldehyde in the trailers poses a serious health risk, he doesn’t even want to open it.
“It makes your eyes burn,” he said. A video with music by Aaron Neville shows Trigger chest-high in water, pulling a boat through the street to his mother’s nearly submerged house down the block. Now the house is gutted; he is trying to rehab it but is still waiting on promised Road Home money.
The Lower Ninth Ward is slowly coming back to life, with rehabbed and newly constructed houses mixed in with overgrown skeletons of flood-ravaged homes and vacant weedy lots where houses were totally washed away by floodwaters or demolished in the aftermath. more
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Golf courses have been lightning rods and symbols for class struggle around the world, as in Morelos, Mexico, where a golf course sucking up the town of Tepoztlan as water led to deadly violent clashes in 1996. Golf courses are…
National Housing Institute
