Category Archives: apartment living

apartment living, Cities, Civic Inferiority Complex, creative placemaking, downtown, Family and Place, Greensboro, Issues and Ideas, Politics of Place, Rural, tips for urbanist living

The Privilege of Urbanism, The Democracy of Placemaking

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Privilege.

The one thing I can take from reading this article and reading my words back to myself on what it has been like living as a classical new urbanist over the past year. I cannot think of another way to illustrate how I feel vis-a-vis a young man, only two years younger than me, who’s trying to get his life back on his feet, facing challenges. It also brings me to a hard truth that my design-focused friends and followers will not want to hear.

Design, even new urbanist design, is out of reach or a major stretch for far too many people, including myself.

Prior to speaking with the reporter about the issues and frustrations I have with where I live, prior to the noise ordinance and curfew restrictions, I’d been thinking about a change in living situation.

However, I kept beating myself up with a major what-if: if I leave my apartment and go somewhere cheaper, then many of the theories I’ve put forth on this blog and in other forms would go unproven.

Isn’t that what a theory is though, an idea that hasn’t been proven? Is anything on this blog law?

No, it isn’t, and that’s actually a good thing.

One of the greatest new urbanist writers of our time is actually not quite an urbanist, in the sense that he doesn’t live in an apartment, near transit, by himself or with one or two other people. I would like to think his credibility on the subject is far superior to mine and the marketplace agrees (slowly but surely).

Yet, I still believed for the longest time, that the only way anyone would listen to my words and create a marketplace around them is if I lived the most extreme urbanism I knew how to live.

And it’s urbanism, but it’s not placemaking.

Placemaking does require an address, but it’s not necessarily an address in demand. Place can be made from old-line suburbia, where each neighbor can decide to grow a different vegetable and then teach the community how to clean and cook those vegetables, in order to eat healthier. The streets of that old-line suburbia could become woonerfs, places where cars automatically go slow and people take advantage of the sloping hills and winding curves and dead ends to get in workouts, that shed the pounds earned by sitting in cars commuting to ever further away jobs, or from sitting at home doing a job that no longer requires a specific location. They could carpool to stores. I think my reporter friend said it best in this article, “Even for a staunch new urbanist like myself, the logic is inescapable: If you want two or three bedrooms and you can afford a mortgage of about $100,000, you head for the suburbs.”

While I truly don’t want the center city to yield to the gilded class, I don’t want us to give up on making good places because we don’t live or can’t afford to do so. I also don’t want those of us with massive privilege to forget that it doesn’t take much for anyone to fall on hard times and not all dealing with hard times are lazy and uncommitted.

Whatever happens and whatever I decide to do in the coming months, my goal is to commit myself to a new theory, the democracy of placemaking. To create, to invent, to include, to incorporate, to adapt, to save and to grow. Let me not forget again, what it really means to be a placeist.

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apartment living, Brooklyn, Food, Greensboro, Issues and Ideas, Things At a Place

Identifying Real Place Inferiority

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Ambulance Chaser

Upon opening my inbox and my social media streams on a recent morning, I was met with this article. In the article, published by the News & Record and written by a fellow blogger Michael Turner, laments the lack of an identity that we have here in Greensboro.

He has some good things to say, but the real problem is not that we don’t have an identity, the problem is that we feel like we are lesser than someone else when it comes to our city. I’ve said this before and I will say it again-ALL CITIES HAVE PROBLEMS. Not just cities, but towns, suburbs, farms and anything else that’s either incorporated and providing municipal services or working hard to make sure the cows come home from graze.

The problem of having no identity is nowhere near as bad as the problem of no heat, no water and no way of getting medical supplies and food. Thanks to Sandy,at least 7,000 people in New York are having that very problem. To cap it off, they still have rent due. Their landlord- the public housing authority. There are middle class people, including first responders, who are facing devastation they never thought they’d see. One minute, they are living the American Dream in the NYC area despite 9/11. The next minute, their home is gone. Do you think they care as much about the ideal and image of NYC or do they care about rebuilding their home or getting basic needs?

I’ve written articles here before about making the best of what you have and creating your own identity wherever you are. Yet, I say this not to force people to stay in unsafe(as in, you hear gunshots nightly and you have stuff stolen on a regular basis and someone’s been assaulted) conditions. I say this once again as I’ve said it before, that the message of place inferiority rings hollow when one has money and connections to make things better.

Please remember our fellow brothers and sisters who are still struggling to make that happen. Many are not lazy, most are just out of luck.

Image above courtesy of Flickr user Andreanna Moya Photography.

apartment living, Arts Districts, Food, Issues and Ideas, Sylva, Transportation, Traveling as An Urbanist, What is urban planning?

Becoming A Placeist-The Black Urbanist on its Second Anniversary

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After two years of writing this blog, it has come to my attention that I am simply a placeist. Not in the Urban Dictionary manner that sort of has undertones of being a racist or any other -ist that is negative. It’s in the sense that I see benefits in all types of land use (as well as drawbacks). I love buildings. I love people. I love cars, trains, planes and buses. All in equal measure. It’s hard for me to continue to keep just being an urbanist. I will keep the name of the blog as is, because there’s still cognitive dissonance with it and the word Black when it refers to my ethnic background. They are separate and I will advocate continually for their separation. The largest forum I have is my blog and Twitter handle.

However, in practice, I’ve seen that we do better when we recognize there are benefits to all land use, in moderation and in reason. So what exactly makes me a placeist? Here are a few things:

–Some days I just need my car. I have a bad back and lifting groceries is hurtful and becomes expensive due to chiropractic adjustments. Also, my job is a statewide job. I need to be able to get to city to city in a timely manner. Now if we had a full blown, New Jersey Transit-esque train system in North Carolina, I could think about selling my car. That and full grocery delivery.

–Some people with yards actually use them. They plant food and sell it to folks. They hold block parties. They build accessory dwellings when they are legal. They have backyard concerts. They use it to enjoy a piece of nature and then get back to solving problems of the world. However, the problem comes when those yards don’t have sidewalks or even roads that make it easy to get all over the city on foot or even just down to the corner drug store.

–Some cities and their dwellers are too expensive, too status quo and too conservative– Although I love the newer hipster businesses, I love the old greasy fish, burger and pizza joints too. My purse does too and since I’m walking home daily, I need all the protein I can get. Also, good design, good working appliances and fixtures and good location should be just guaranteed, not an “urban amenity”. And what of people who stay in their own neighborhoods and never branch out? Who want to do something new, but never stop talking about it. Creativity is not all due to osmosis; you have to be doing something on your computer at the Starbucks, not just reading someone else’s punditry.

–Some suburbs are dead– I’m watching the one I grew up in, which in reality was the annexed outskirts of a city, die. The businesses are vacant, dirty or predatory. People do harm there because they can. I hate going out there because it feels dead. It’s one thing to have vibrant businesses that aren’t as shiny and slick. It’s another thing to have businesses that are beat-down looking and beat down their people through predatory lending, high prices or rotten food. On top of that, the good stuff is going even further out or coming back into the core of the city. The bus can take folks into the core, but that’s given the bus even comes close by at all. Suburbia was not made for the poor, yet it’s gradually becoming the domain of the poor in many areas.

–We need our farms– How else will we eat? Corporate farming has been good and bad for feeding America. Yes, less of America goes hungry, but they also have diseases and conditions that were not evident before corporate farming. Also, there’s the whole food market that’s been turned upside down by Walmart, the government and other major food companies. Yet, at the end of the day, the ability to be partially or fully self-sufficient through your farm is noble and should continue to be honored by society and the market.

There are more bold points and I’ll be writing about those in the coming weeks online and offline. Yet, what really made me change my mind about this whole urbanist-suburbanist-ruralist dichotomy is that thing we call the mountain town. It and its cousins the beach town, and the college town throw everything we know about placemaking out the door. It’s equal parts resort for the rich and occupation for the working poor. There is unmatched beauty and intense knowledge exchange. There are quirky haunts like the soul teahouse and the gourmet Mexican restaurant.

Big cities used to hold a monopoly on these types of things. However, with the internet and other technology, once remote places aren’t so remote anymore. What I love especially about the towns defined by the geography, is that the restriction of either beach or mountain peak force towns to be built compactly. Especially in the mountains. Eventually, Walmart runs out of room because it’s competing with a mound of granite that is way too expensive and impractical to blow up.

Nowadays, I’m about good places, period. Therefore I go forth as the Black Urbanist, Placeist at Large.

apartment living, Arts Districts, Cities, Food, Greensboro, Issues and Ideas, Politics of Place, Things At a Place, Transportation, What is urban planning?

Finding Happiness in the “Generic” City

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So I was looking for jobs about six months ago and I came upon my current position through my network of grad school friends. On paper I knew I had what it takes to get the job. I also knew that this was a job that I could grow into and also be myself. Later on, after getting the job, I moved to the downtown area where this job was located. I have a great view of said downtown from this place. I can afford to eat a meal out at least once a week in this downtown. I can walk to work and to those restaurants in less than 15 minutes. Also, I have a car. It’s paid off and I can get to where I need to go outside of downtown in about 15 minutes. My car can also get to the beach in 4 hours and the mountains in 3.5. There’s decent low-cost places to park it. Oh, and I went to grad school in this same place, with one year free and the other for less than $20,000. Oh, and the train station is right next door.

This is my hometown. I have to write its name with the state abbreviation beside it. It’s economically distressed in areas. There’s no light rail. There’s no Trader Joes (yet). My parents live within those 15 minutes.

It could be Anytown, USA, the Generic City.

I thought I’d be living somewhere else by now, but I don’t need to. Even with those drawbacks I listed in the paragraph above.

The New York Times recently published one of their famous stories of how recent college graduates are living in New York. New York for Americans and much of the world is probably the number one name-brand city. A lot of people in the comments claimed that those folks featured were trust fund babies. However, I see in some of these stories echoes of mine. This too is an article for those of us who are fortunate to be working a salaried job. To have state-school level student debt, if any at all. To have a parent who was able to take one in while one worked out their career issues.

My parents, a schoolteacher and an electrician, along with a few other family members and generous friends stepped in to help me out by providing shelter,food,entertainment, money advice and even a few extra dollars to help me get my car, furniture and the like. I call this the village effect. I know everyone has some kind of support network, even if it’s just social services. In the meantime, I went to a state school and financed it mostly through scholarships and grants, taking out loans,then paying back the differential of what I didn’t need. I did the same thing in grad school, only I lived at home and worked as a graduate assistant. In between I worked a few places, but nothing longer than 14 months or permanent. I made some financial mistakes, but I know now what I need to do to fix them. Now I live in a small, but solo apartment in a very nice area of downtown.

Yet, if I’d moved to New York City, or even Washington, DC, my true dream name-brand city, I don’t think I’d be in such good shape, unless I had a job with a crazy high salary. My equivalent job in New York pays exactly the same as it does here in North Carolina. Unfortunately, there’s no cost of living adjustment. On the subject of college, my loans would have eaten me alive. We are going to assume that I would not have received any financial aid, at either a public or private university.

I also think the NYT article echoes a need that some people have to move somewhere with action, but not necessarily with a job or a job that pays all the bills. What I advocate is for a person to move somewhere with a job, but close to a decent airport, train station, Megabus stop or cross-country interstate. If you are living somewhere where you have low rent, then you can save up to take vacations (paid or unpaid). If you are in a mid-sized, but well-located city like I am, a low paycheck goes a long way. Either way, a steady paycheck in this economy goes far longer that no money in a city that may be a name-brand, but with no job prospects for you.

Back to the negatives of this generic city for a minute. There are some missing stores, but they are coming (Trader Joes, we are still waiting). Yet, with that aside, being in this generic city, I know the powers-to-be who are bringing the store in and why we have yet to see it. I’ve also mentioned on my Facebook page about how our 35 year old co-op is moving downtown and assuming the role a Traders has in many a community.

Another negative factor is the local social scene. We are still more of a family town, but we do have singles activities if you look long and hard. For me, it’s taking the steps to one, accept that I have a different lifestyle and two, cultural events aren’t necessarily one-sized fits all.

Once again, this is an elitist article. This assumes that you have a decent job or job offers. You have a choice on where you live. No, scratch that, this is a real article. You only got one job offer and it’s not in that name-brand city you dream about every night. You love everything about your life besides the city on the line of your mailing address. However, in that generic city, you just might be living your dream life after all.

apartment living, Durham, Greensboro, Issues and Ideas, tips for urbanist living

Actually Being Urban #2- Finding Diversity and Cleaning Clothes At the Laundromat

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So your clothes are dirty. The hamper is overflowing. No big deal right? The washer and dryer are in the closet. Or maybe you have to lug them downstairs, but nevertheless,  laundry machines are never too far away. Unless you are me and living in Downtown Greensboro, without the rental machines that cost way too much to rent. I tried to put it off, but I knew eventually I’d have to trek out to the laundromat.

Most bonafide urban dwellers either have machines in the basement or they have a nearby (read: walking distance) laundromat that they can use. Yet, here in Greensboro, there are no real downtown laundries. The closest one, near a gas station, with free dryers, just happened to be out of order on Sunday. (After this revelation, I took advantage of being out in the car and got a breakfast biscuit- another only-in- a-car-dependent-place “luxury.”) I then went to the laundry/bar near campus. It looked dreary, so I drove on past it. After circiling through another laundry parking lot where I saw questionable looking men(as a woman, I don’t take too many chances. I hate to label folks on looks, but these men looked like prunes and not in a good way). I finally settled on a place with older machines, but next door to an Ace Hardware store. It was a very diverse crowd, the machines were very clean to be so old and it only cost me $9 to do the bulk of my laundry.

As you can see with this paragraph above, there are a lot of issues and lessons when it comes to doing laundry here in the city of Greensboro. Here are the major ones:

–Non-drivers with no laundry machines are really out of luck– Not completely, there’s always loading laundry on the bus. I’m sure folks do it in other places. However, where I live, going to a public laundromat (versus one in the basement of a building) signals even more than the act of being on the bus in the first place that something may be amiss. None of these stereotypes should even be a factor. Going to do laundry should just be going to do laundry. Only, instead of owning machines, you rent them and not for $45 a month.

–Assuming that everyone living downtown is affluent enough to have their own machines is a failure in logic.– There should be more chances to share machines at my apartment complex. After all, laundry is for many, not just myself, a bi-monthly or monthly exercise. Also, if enough people have dry cleaning, a managed apartment complex or condo building could either operate it’s own dry cleaners/laundromat or make special arrangements with a nearby one. I think it’s great that we have the option to hook up machines, but the $45 per month rental fee for those who don’t could be better used to provide professional laundry services or self-serve laundry. Or even better, provide dry cleaning and automatically provide laundry machines, like my old apartment in Durham did.

–The laundromat is one of the most diverse spaces of commerce– I consider it a space of commerce because I had to pay for the use of my machines. However, this is more of a service than a place that encourages mass consumption such as a Walmart or even a mall/lifestyle center. Anyway, you can meet all types of people from all walks of life. You can also take time away from your busy schedule and dig into a book or writing as you wait for your clothes to wash and dry. It is this part of the experience that turns the laundromat into a great third space and what I enjoyed most about my experience.

Ultimately, I learned that there is no shame in going to the laundromat. I knew that anyway, but being in a place that cultivates that shame makes it tough. I did my laundry in 3 short hours(as compared to 5-10 when using home machines). I caught up on reading. I saw people that I wouldn’t normally see. And I got one step closer to actually being urban.

The picture above is the actual laundromat I patronized. Share your laundromat stories, theories and ideas on my Facebook and Twitter pages.

apartment living, Greensboro, tips for urbanist living, Traveling as An Urbanist

Please Excuse My Absence…I’ve Been On a Journey

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I had no intention of leaving the blog idle for this long. Yet, occasionally, living the actual life of an urbanist gets in the way of being able to write about it.

Yet while away from my urbanist pen, I was able to experience two key events that I think have major significance in the creation of community on a micro and a macro level.

The first is that I finalized my move into Downtown Greensboro. The picture above is from my balcony window. Every day I witness all manner of trains and buses ferry people and things across the state and potentially across the country. Just beyond the train depot (which has been beautifully restored in the last few years), the skyline buildings of Greensboro and our main street slant out and appear to dance before my eyes.

Ok, this is where I stop and admit I have an unnatural love for good urban architecture. But so do a lot of you reading this page, so I’ll carry on.

On the other hand, there’s the instance of travel, the journeys we all undertake in life. At work it is a focus of a traveling Smithsonian exhibit we are sponsoring. I went down to rural eastern North Carolina to help promote the new exhibit last month. I had a great time getting to know my still new colleagues and seeing how it’s really going down in what we call “Down East”. I found a charming main street in one town and the appearance of suburban sprawl like development in the other. There was also a healthy dose of jingoism. The hotel where we stayed was built by the Murphy Family, a pork dynasty that wanted to have a hotel and state-of-the-art Irish bar to entertain people. There was also a master planned upscale retirement community nearby.

Now that I’m finally back home, settled and almost unpacked, I can really soak in what’s going to come next in my chapter as a black urbanist. I see five new elements of my urban experience.

  • Gentrification– I am a professional black person, living in an area that was targeted and won slum clearance just a few short years ago. Now although the neighborhood resembles the French Quarter and also appears to have similar dynamics of race (who lives there, what people do, etc.)
  • Gated communities– When I signed the lease, I forgot that our buildings have controlled access hallways. I appreciate the layer of safety, but I am still not in favor of gating communities down in lieu of dealing with why people feel the need to steal. Are we providing a good economy so that people can have their own stuff and let people have their own stuff?
  • Walking as a primary mode of transportation– I’ve looked forward to this the most. However, in reality, there are many days where I regret having elected to make the 15 minute walk in the 90 and sometimes 100+ degree heat. Yet, I know that once the weather gets cooler, walking is going to help me arrive at the office settled and help me shake off the office when I get home. Plus, my gas hand has sat at a half tank for over a week now. Walking will become less and less of an issue as time goes on. I’ve also noticed how little people actually walk around here too. I’ll be addressing that in a future post.
  • Biking– My dad worked some magic and my old bike is now fully functional. Looking forward to riding it to work and to going out on trails with family and friends. I’ll also be able to advocate even better for bike and pedestrian safety and I’m fully engaged in these modes of transportation.
  • Trains– At least 10 trains come right in front of my house daily. Some I love to see, such as the Amtrak trains. Others are just noisy and I’m thankful that they don’t wake me up. I often sit on my balcony and watch them go by, as well as the city buses coming into what is our multi-modal depot. They also serve as the foreground for the background of our city skyline you see above. I hope to take the train again one day soon to points north, south and east, since it’s now right in my front yard and will add to my urban experience.

Now, that’s settled. Let me get back to living and I look forward to a greater richness in my writings now that I’m finally in the environment I’ve written on and loved on so much.

apartment living, Greensboro, tips for urbanist living

Actually Being Urban Part 1- Apartment Finding

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I’ve been fortunate in the past three weeks to obtain full time employment. What that means is that I finally get to put into practice a lot of the things I preach on this blog and retweet out to others on the social sites. You will also notice a few minor site changes(better tags, better pictures) and hopefully more real stories of what it’s like to live a more urban lifestyle in a suburbanesque locale. In this post I will discuss my apartment search.

Let’s start simple. The top five things I want in an apartment are as follows:

1.    Doors to private areas
2.    Balcony
3.    Second floor
4.    Closet space
5.    Low energy bills

That would be inside the apartment. On the exterior, these are my top five:

1.    Proximity to places I need to go on a daily basis
2.    Fitness Center
3.    Bike facilities
4.    Camaraderie of neighbors and management staff
5.    Proximity to fun activities, walking distance preferred, no more than 3 mile drive away from fun stuff unless it’s truly spectacular(other cities, cultural events, opportunities to speak and network with others)

Going into this, I knew the best option for my wishlist was downtown in a new development called CityView. I’d visited the apartments before, but considering a roommate. Now, I was visiting for myself only and I wanted to make sure things were still cool. Also, I’d heard that there were solid concrete floors in the apartments. I was not a fan of this idea and I needed to investigate that problem as well.

Side rant: If you are putting a feature in just to be “urban” and it’s not practical. STOP. You look stupid and even I as an urbanist don’t buy it.

Yet, in touring the “studio”, I was told that there is carpet in the bedrooms and some laminate wood in the living room on the second and third floors. There are also doors to the bedroom. Two in fact. I was sold.

Or so I thought. I got home and I thought about how dark the place seemed. When I lived in Durham, I had light surrounding my place. Even in my childhood bedroom, and throughout my mom’s house there is abundant light. I needed to look at a couple of other places. I am adding light to both of my lists above.

I won’t name the other three complexes, but it’s not because they are evil. They are in great locations(two are walking distance to a lot of big box and even some college style retail, the other is a little closer to what will be my office downtown). Their staff was super nice and didn’t look at me like I had horns when I wanted to tour their complexes. I learned valuable information from all three on general apartment maintenance and money-saving tips.

It was a 15 minute walk on a stressful day that helped me make my decision. From the time I ran track as a high school student, to migrating across campus for a student government meeting or a movie at the campus cinema (or class, I did a lot of that, but they were closer to my dorm), I found solace in walking or running. I knew that if I chose CityView, it would make no sense for me to drive most days of the week to work. I tend to play downtown as well and all of my playhouses would be on the way to my house. I would be able to blow off pressure from work. I could squeeze in a midday walk home. If I wanted to cut time, I could get my bike back and actually ride it this time.

Then the staff was really, really nice, offering discounts and an opportunity to waitlist until the perfect unit (one that actually does face the city, as some don’t) came available. I kept finding out acquaintances of mine that I think highly of would be neighbors. I toured the sample apartment again and someone was just moving in. I saw that all my furniture (which is very few pieces) would fit and that light would in fact come into the apartment, if it weren’t for facing another one of the buildings in the complex. All the pieces of my vision were coming together. (Including the closet space. One closet is just shelves, the other is hangers. If you know me well, you know that this is the perfect balance).

So in July, I will officially be standing in my front yard, as I am in the picture above. I will be a true urban dweller. And this idea of being a black urbanist will no longer be a total illusion. Plus, I get to tell more stories of what it’s like to live, work and play in the CBD of a smaller, more suburban city.

Photo credit above by the lovely Stephanie Eaton. Please check out her work. If you are in the Greensboro area, she would love to make you look as good as she has me. Also, don’t forget Twitter and Facebook where I keep the peeps informed.