Is Gentrification Good?

One aspect of New Urbanism that is often discussed is gentrification and the role it supposedly plays in making neglected areas of cities attractive again. However, its danger comes with the fact that it has potential to uproot current residents of the area being gentrified, and to replace current services with ones that will seem to be beneficial to the new residents.

These issues manifest themselves in the way that wealth (and the lack thereof) are personified in American society. Middle and high income residents are likely to be white, and low income residents are likely to be ethnic minorities.

And herein lies the problem. The economic issue of gentrification (middle and high income people moving into an area of investment and displacing the lower income groups who used to live there) is suddenly turned into a racial issue, where white residents are seen as kicking black residents out of their houses and forcing them to move elsewhere, either into other neglected areas or into public housing.

Because of this, gentrification areas and building public or affordable housing can sometimes be opposed along racial lines.  

The solution to this conundrum lies in breaking the perceived link between ethnic minorities and poverty, and thus ethnic minorities and criminal activity.

This can be accomplished through rebuilding an area while maintaining its architectural style and building public housing units interspersed with market rate housing units, allowing public housing units to be distributed to tenants in the form of vouchers. The value of the vouchers would decrease as the residents' income increased until the residents could own the property outright.  

Yet another way to determine whether a unit would be market rate or public housing would be to make every other unit that comes up for sale in a neighborhood public or market rate.

Either way, there should be no architectural differences between the public and market rate units. Doing such would create the opinion that occupants of public housing are by some means inferior to occupants of market rate housing.

Good public housing should not keep the poor in poverty.

Taking the approach of sandwiching public housing between units of market rate or affordable housing would both confer the social benefits of mixed income housing to the lower income residents and eliminate the stereotype of racial groups being predisposed to poverty or crime.

A good way to picture this would be to imagine side streets with rowhouses along them, every other rowhouse on one side of a street would be public housing, and the same for the other side of the street. Main avenues would be bordered by mixed use development with some commercial office space thrown in.

If you take away one thing from this article, it should be the following:

Ethnic minorities do not cause crime, poverty causes crime.

On United Nations Agenda 21

Anyone who is somewhat familiar with current issues in planning has mostlikely heard of UN Agenda 21, something most often brought to discussion by NIMBYists and the right wing skeptic who fear a takeover of the United States by the UN or a world government conspiracy.

But what actually is it? Is it a set of binding guidelines that member nations are required to follow, or is it simply the recognition of a problem?

The Agenda is composed of 27 principles which highlight various economic and environmental goals which communities should strive for in order to be considered “sustainable”. Special attention is paid to developing countries and to womens' rights. The Agenda is silent on enforcement of these issues, and states that it is the right of nations to exploit their natural resources at will.  

Thus, it is simply the recognition of the problem of development on the environment, much the same way that warning labels on packs of cigarettes and bottles of alcohol are recognitions of the health problems they cause.

However, the Agenda promotes a skewed view of the issue of urban development. The word “environment” is mentioned forty times throughout the course of the article, whereas the word “economic” is only mentioned four times. Thus, the Agenda promotes the idea of New Urbanism from the typical environmentalist perspective, rather than taking a broader, all inclusive view and including economic and social arguments.

This perspective serves to isolate people of other political views who would otherwise support many issues raised for New Urbanism, as stated in an earlier post.  

The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: A Movie

I came across this video some time ago, it is the trailer for a movie called The Pruitt Igoe Myth detailing the legacy and misconceptions of it's titular infamous housing project. I have not gotten a chance to view this movie yet, but this era is one of the most pivotal and most interesting in the history of urban development.

The things depicted in this trailer and covered in this movie are the reason we do this. We advocate for responsible growth not because we want to force people out of houses, institute communism, or bring about a world government. We do it because it is our responsibility to make sure what happened fifty years ago never gets wrought on humanity again.

New Urbanism, Propelling the Movement

This is the third post in the critique of New Urbanism series, in it I will focus on how to best propel the movement in order for it to be widely accepted by the public.

1) Public Meetings

Public meetings, and lots of them. One of the major reasons the last full scale urban reconstruction effort failed was because the public was not allowed to give input on the projects. This should be changed. Input means more than a monthly planning commission meeting in which each proposal is devoted less than an hour of discussion. Input means holding town hall meetings with citizens, explaining how urban development effects their lives, explain the need for what is being proposed, and allow them to make informed suggestions and decisions.

2) Civil Discussion

This is perhaps the most important part of advocating anything, and one of the most ignored. Calling someone bigoted, stupid, or idiotic for disagreeing with a particular viewpoint does not make them more likely to reconsider their ideas or become more supportive of the one being presented. Countering hate with more hate only serves to level any moral or ideological high ground held by one side in a debate. Vitriolic discussion only serves to inflame one side of a debate and boost the ego of another, which is counter productive to whatever actions are being debated. It all comes down to one question: What's more important, solving a problem or making a statement?  

3) Tangibility

Many members of the public consider some of the core concepts of urban development hard to understand. This is because most people have little to no experience with them and thus do not know how they operate. A core idea of urban development is to design a built environment that makes people as happy and as comfortable as possible. A good way to demonstrate this would be through workshops and walking tours of urban areas where things such as public/affordable/market rate housing, mixed use development, business improvement districts are visible and can be interacted with. Abstract concepts could be made concrete and emotional reactions could be gathered.

4) Competence

Elected officials seem to be losing their will to make hard decisions and to use foresight on public projects. Thus, many large infrastructure projects are over-studied and under-built, the justification being that perpetual study leads to cost savings, when it in fact does not.

A good example of this is the DC streetcar project. The original incarnation of the project was a light rail line running along reserved right of way in Anacostia. The right of way was bought from CSX and three cars acquired. Estimated opening was set for 2010. However, it was soon determined that the city already owned some of the right of way that was bought from CSX, so an alternative route was planned through city streets, the opening was still set for 2010.

After several years of route changes, the opening date was moved to 2012. To boot, then councilman Vincent Grey issued a proposal to cancel the entire plan, only to be swiftly shot down. In the meantime, the cars were delivered to the Greenbelt metro yard and placed in storage.

The DDOT has instead decided to construct a line down H street, construction of which started in 2009. This was being built parallel with the Anacostia line until 2010, when DDOT shut down construction of the Anacostia line, which has been incorporated into phase II of the master system.

Two extensions (east and west) are being planned for the H Street line, which even then would only be a minimum operational segment. The opening date has now been set for 2013.

This is not to say that the streetcar system should be shuttered entirely. In fact, a recent editorial in the Washington Post noted that most lines of the streetcar system would be built to a more appropriate timeline, and many others have noted that the streetcar system is about connecting neighborhoods, spawning economic development, and making neighborhoods more livable, whereas Metrorail is designed primarily for commuters.