The Thursday List, Urban Wonkbook

Urban Wonkbook- Names Do Matter

Good morning folks. Every once in a while, but generally once a week, I try to cull all of my favorite links into one place, write up some commentary and give some love (or wise constructive criticism) to a few other fellow writers. The name Wonkbook comes first from my friend over at the Washington Post and two, it comes from the concept of political and cultural analysis, which is my wheelhouse. This also gives me a chance to write directly to you readers and share more of the inner workings of my brain

-First of all, yesterday was a very exciting day over at the blog. I began my partnership with The Atlantic Cities to run some of the content you see right here. They chose to run my laundry adventure from a few weeks ago. I look forward to reaching new audiences and new people, not just die hard urbanists or community developers or cultural studies folks.

-In addition, continued thanks to the folks at Sustainable Cities Collective, who ran my analysis of freight transport versus actual people transport yesterday as well.

As always, if you want to read my posts first, make sure you are on the email list. I also have an RSS feed, working on getting it visible again. Also working on a few cosmetic changes to this site, so look out for those as well. In the meantime, I wanted to highlight a few more great posts:

-Apparently before CNU 18 (the Atlanta 2010 Congress), Howard Blackson had a laundry related adventure of his own. His, however, is more serious. If we can’t provide for basic needs, namely clothing, in our nice shiny new town centers, then I think we have failed. This was a two year old post, have we gotten better?

-Steve Mouzon had me a bit hungry yesterday as he discussed the urban form as a fried egg, with Philadelphia as the focus city. Outside of having great cheesteak, Philadelphia is well known for having an nice compact density. Yet, Mouzon warns us that if we have too much of the same thing, then even compact density is worthless. We should be mixing up our uses, even on the same block.

-Over in Charlotte, Tracey Crowe invites us to think about turning concrete walls into green walls. She also highlights how the famous tree canopy of Charlotte is gradually erroding, but the need for green organisms has not. Thankfully, we too in Greensboro still have a decent canopy, but I’ve seen some ugly maps out of our region too.

-Now we get to why names and stereotypes matter. First of all, take a look at this map that Renee DiResta put together. She took the first few things that come up in Google AutoComplete when people as “Why is so…” and overlayed them on a U.S. map. This site is more focused on reputation over names, but reputation is still as much part of our own personality as humans and that carries over into how we see our places as well.

-Finally, Dan Reed on Greater Greater Washington was given a bit of a hard time when he discussed why names matter. For him, it was seeing the apartment building of his childhood change names and lose some of it’s identity. A commenter tried to make the point that a name of a place is less important of an urban issue than poverty or other blight-related issues. Yet, I feel if a place has a name associated with blight, then it’s hard to sell or get people to rent there. Also, names can change on paper, but may never change in minds. Think about how many people still call Diddy, Puff Daddy. Even after 15 years, some things will never change.

Have a great day folks!

Issues and Ideas, Politics of Place, tips for urbanist living, Transportation

Getting Human Transport Outside Of The Box

A human is not a box. However, we still prefer to transport ourselves as such. Then again, we do live in a world, namely in the United States, where corporations are people and those “people” often make things that come in boxes.

Yet, we are failing ourselves by only making our transportation systems work as if everyone comes in a box. You know I’m anti-hierarchy, but this is one clear place where a hierarchy makes perfect sense. The hierarchy I’m talking about is one of transportation (or transit) oriented development.

Those of you fellow urban planning nerds have heard the words transit oriented development so much, it’s almost like a bad song stuck in your head. Especially those of you who are urban planners and you can’t get your community on your side to plan better. In their minds, if it’s not bringing people or “people” to commercial enterprises, then it’s not doing it’s job or worth the money. Don’t even get me started on the STROAD problem.

Sadly, not everything that people do is worth money. Sometimes it’s worth time or community or love. Therefore, we need to stop yielding to the “people”‘s transportation hierarchy and get back to the human transportation hierarchy.

So what does the “people’s” hierarchy look like?

1. Plane
2. Boat
3.Train
4.Tractor-Trailor Truck
5.Cart/Wheelbarrow/Red Wagon
6.Bike Cart
7. Hands/Back of a person or animal.

As you can see, this list prioritizes space, speed and ability to bear weight. In some iterations, it doesn’t even include human beings. If this transport hierarchy can be worked through without humans, why do some think it’s appropriate for humans without cargo?

In my opinion, this is how a human-based transportation hierarchy would go:

1. Walking
2.Biking
3.Jitney/Bus/Taxi
4.Train
5.Car
6.Plane
7.Boat

I’ve left out animals on purpose. Unless you have no other choice, let’s let our horses, camels and other animals lay at rest. Machines were invented for a good reason here ;). I also went from the most to the least mechanical. We are organic beings after all. At least in the United States we really value our independence from things besides ourselves.

Bringing all these thoughts to a close, quite simply we need to bust out of the box. That box being the one that makes humans a commodity and not a community.

Find me on Facebook or Twitter. I’ll be outside the box.

Image Credit: Flickr user Roland Tanglao under an Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) licence.

Greensboro

Actually Being Urban Part #3-Working Downtown

5 Comments

For the past three months, I’ve been engaged in my third experience of working in a dense, downtown environment.

Hands down this has been my best experience and the most personally fulfilling. I work to promote the presentation and the funding of humanities projects throughout the state of North Carolina. This means that I get to travel out of the office very frequently, occasionally visiting nice old main streets and the growing, modern downtowns. I’ve met all these wonderful creative people inside and outside of the office. Yet, I don’t have to travel to enjoy my job. Much of my enjoyment comes from being able to work in a dense, vibrant environment. There are three main benefits though to having this job in relation to the urbanist experience.

Benefit #1 is with transportation. With living downtown, I have the option to drive or not to drive. When the weather is nice, I walk the five blocks to work. When the weather is bad or when I know I’m going to need to leave downtown as soon as work is done, I only have a three minute drive to a parking deck which is paid for by my office. I have yet to take my bike out, but that’s also an option. One of my colleagues walks daily, rain or shine to work and speaks of how it helps him clear his head. Another takes the train in from the RTP area periodically and uses the time in between the work and  train schedules to get caught up on work and enjoy bits and pieces of downtown Greensboro. All the others drive, but appreciate being able to park so close to our building without having to pay out of pocket.

Benefit #2 is the variety of experiences. It’s not unheard of for me to run into one of my old grad school classmates who works at city hall, an old family friend on their day off or even one of my colleagues who managed to slip out to lunch before me. And then there are street musicians, canvassers and other out of the box types you don’t necessarily expect in Greensboro. Unfortunately, the vibrancy of downtown is not continuous. On my morning walks downtown feels like a ghost town. Other nights it’s almost too packed out with people. Yet, even when I’m the only one walking down the street, I appreciate the store windows and their event announcements, perfectly styled clothing and enticing food smells making me decide even before breakfast what I want to eat for lunch or even dinner.

My third and final benefit is that our office windows face out to the Center City Park. When I don’t feel like walking all the way home at lunch, I come down here and seek solace on one of the many park benches. A couple of other colleagues are the same way. While sitting there, I bear witness to the true diversity of the people of Greensboro. There are the men who appear to be retired and come down to talk jive to each other. There are the children whose parents bring them to run around the fountain. On Wednesday’s at noon there’s live music and if I stay late enough there’s exercise by the fountain on Monday’s and Wednesdays. Ultimately, the park is a nice break from being stuck upstairs all day, especially since my particular office does not  have a window, nor the downtown view. That’s ok. I’d spend most of my time staring out the window and failing to get actual work done.

As a child, I always imagined myself going to work downtown. I’ve done stints of work in office parks and on campuses. They have their perks, but nothing to me says “I’m going to work” like working downtown.

Wonder how else I’ve “been urban”, check out parts 1, and 2 here. Photo above I took in August of 2011 of my office building and the surrounding park and parking deck I occasionally use. You can also find me on Facebook and Twitter.

Alexandria, Cities, Issues and Ideas, Politics of Place, tips for urbanist living, Transportation, What is urban planning?

Identity Crisis- When Your Suburb is Really a Town

9 Comments
Sorry Alexandria, you’re really a city, but I think we all knew that deep down(Photo Shot by me in August of 2008)

What makes a suburb a suburb? It’s one of the major questions that is at the center of the battle for how governments or independent communities of people should regulate and create public space.

This issue has been on my mind quite a bit in the last few months. First, it was Emily Badger’s Pseudosuburbanism as a resident of Alexandria, VA. Then it was this article I shared on the social media pages about how diversity is changing the old rules of what constitutes suburbia. Ultimately, some of this debate is the old civic inferiority complex rearing up its head again.

Ultimately, I’ve found a few things make a town an actual town. They are as follows:

-You have an individual or several individuals who govern your affairs as elected officials. This government is recognized in the town charter.

-You have your own post office (However, this one is becoming less prevalent with many rural towns losing their post office)

-Your population is heterogeneous. Diversity is the rule, rather than the exception.

-Organic community creation (non-governmental entities such as fraternal organizations and neighborhood associations) includes and embraces the diversity of the community.

-Your school system services children from birth to the end of college. This is done through Head Start, a vibrant public K-12 system and a community college. Bonus points if your town is a college town.

-You have either a traditional or a created main street apparatus. This apparatus does not count if it’s really just the suburban mall that’s been grafted into the form. Old Town Alexandria is a good example of having national stores, but under multiple owners and with public streets, sidewalks and parks.

-Once again, there are multiple owners, renters and the like. The community wasn’t planned. If it was planned, it has long ceded into having multiple private owners of buildings and public control of infrastructure.

You may note that this list does not address form, outside of having a true main street. I am not excusing places that do not have a good urban or town form. Yet, this post is to highlight that not all main cities have a monopoly on good urban form. Unfortunately, in many cases in the U.S. today, you are either a town or a city.

If you don’t recognize that, it’s time to act like one.

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

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

4 Comments

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.

Arts Districts, Greensboro, tips for urbanist living

Strengthening and Creating the Urban Arts District

9 Comments

From my observations, downtowns across America live and die by their arts institutions. I know this is the case in Greensboro. We are currently debating the need for a new performing arts center downtown, thanks to the need to update our current civic center auditorium and the opportunity to pay down debts.

Yet, if we are not careful, this will become a misguided initiative, much like Nathaniel Hood has stated in his tome against entertainment districts. I believe that arts districts must be organic and cater to already established needs. Thankfully, there are arts leaders in Greensboro who are also like-minded.

This past week, (July 8-14 of 2012) I ran across an article in the News and Record, our local major paper. A former mayor of ours, Keith Holiday, is now  the executive director of the Carolina Theater, a historic venue that hosts old movies, the Greensboro Opera and a few other local dance, drama, and music productions. Occasionally the venue gets national performers such as Roberta Flack for intimate theater style shows that can’t quite fill the civic center auditorium.

In this article, he touts a plan to build a bigger theater space, similar to the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC), directly behind the Carolina Theater space. This space is a parking lot owned by the City of Greensboro. The article above has a rendering of what this space would look like. Also included would be a new black box theater on the top two floors of the facility and an outdoor performance space between the two venues.

While this does create a large scale complex, management would be in two hands. These hands are the Carolina Theater(which is nonprofit) and the City of Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department(government). Also, there are two other theater companies, that also operate as nonprofits, downtown. Combining these with the existing art galleries, dance studios and live music venues, Downtown Greensboro already has an organic arts district. This arts district also incorporates public space and public engagement.

Honestly, because of the abundance of these spaces, we really only need the DPAC sized venue. In addition to the downtown spaces, the universities in town have performance venues. Although not considered traditional arts venues, the NewBridge Bank Park (home to our minor league baseball team), as well as Center City Park, are also worthy of being considered performance space in the downtown area. And then there’s the coliseum complex where the aforementioned civic center auditorium, as well as an arena and several flexible event spaces also reside.

Still, as stated in the News and Record article, there is need for more arts space. There are many people creating and crafting and there can never be enough space for them. In addition, they are generating jobs and a new economy. Coupled with the growing crafters movement, bloggers like myself and traditional creative fields such as architecture, Florida’s creative class is actually alive and well.

Ultimately, an arts district:
– Builds from the bottom-up
– Incorporates and take stock of existing venues, uses and companies
– Thinks ahead, but incorporates all performers and connoisseurs past and present.
– Entertains and feeds the soul

Note that none of these factors mention economic development. I know that this is the cause célèbre of arts venues right now in light of being harassed and pressed by government entities and funders to be self-sustaining. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t be a good financial steward. Yet, I am charging cities to think about creating cultural capital and cultural value, then watch the money pour in.
And as I’ve stated before, you cannot be willing to create unless you are willing to fail first.

Since this article was first published, a plan was enacted to use space formally utilized by the YWCA, adjacent to the central branch of the Greensboro Public Library, after a public charette was held to solicit feedback from residents. Many resident-generated ideas ended up in the final recommendation from that charette.

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

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

2 Comments

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.

Greensboro, Issues and Ideas

The Real Failure of the Creative Class Is the Fear of Failure

9 Comments

Seeing Richard Florida speak at CNU 20 last month, all I could think about was one thing and one thing only:

He rated Greensboro, which in addition to being my current city is my hometown, 41 of 49 in his original list of large creative class cities.

No, it’s not the bottom of the barrel, but I have friends in Memphis who are just as discontented with him for being 49. From what I’ve heard of them, their number could be misguided as well. It doesn’t matter that those numbers are eleven years old. They still hurt.

That hurt has me doing a lot of work to prove Florida wrong. Hence why I always come down on city rankings. I’m still somewhat insecure about my city, but I know I’m wrong to be. I write this blog to help clear my head and keep it moving.

At the end of the day, thanks to this self-reflection, I don’t think I’m the problem. Nor is Greensboro in itself. We have art, we have theaters, and we have vibrant gay and immigrant communities. We are gaining jobs among young professionals. We’ve assessed our arts impact. And our alt-weekly newspaper has put this creative class issue front and center this week and will continue to do so at least for the next two years.

So what is the real failure of the creative class?

It is the fear of failure.

A colleague of mine (and friend of the blog) stated this fear so eloquently in a meeting this week. Basically, he reminded myself and others that we should not be in the business of not wanting to create or present ideas just because they could be rejected. He went on to say we should be mindful of how we let opinions and attitudes into our organization that discourage creativity and the creative process. This process includes failure.

I want to take his words a step further and apply them to the community as a whole.

We have to be willing to create and fail, along with our success. We are so focused on making sure our reputations, our money and the illusions of both stay in tact so much that we miss the need to mess up sometimes.

When we talk about a creative class, we must first look introspectively and be willing to support a true creative process.

We must not laugh at our city’s shortcomings (or at least not laugh for long). We must not abandon our properties or let them become slums because we are too cheap to make them any better. We must not assume that a property is a slum because the house is painted purple and the grass spray painted orange (that is if you do have a single-family home, same goes for odd windows, apartment buildings and signage).

We do need to put our money where our mouth is. If you have abundance, be willing to give to create something better. Realize though that not all of your money will be a good return on investment. However, that’s not to say that it never will.

And finally, remember that on paper, any F can be turned into an A. Let’s start doing that in our communities and fortifying the true sense of the creative class.

The photo above, taken by me on Elm Street in Greensboro, is one of the alt-weekly’s newspaper containers. I think it illustrates perfectly what we need to do to get over this creative class hurdle. Let’s talk about it on Facebook or Twitter.

Greensboro, Issues and Ideas, tips for urbanist living

Does PseudoSuburbanist Equal Hipster?

1 Comment

As we all browsed Emily Badger’s Atlantic Cities post on her own civic inferiority complex last week, the question above was in quite a few heads, namely my own. Now, I attempt to sort through all the good and bad things that this idea provokes.

First, a primer to this discussion. Take a look at the Urban Dictionary’s definition of hipster and pseudo-hipster. The former is admittedly a new word for what was once known as bohemian culture in decades past. In essence, there has always been a counterculture and hipster is just a new name for it. Yet, the latter definition really intrigued me. I had no clue that it was on the site before I went there. However, upon a closer inspection, I find that this type of person may also be our true Pseudosuburbanist.

This person is going along with the hipster trend because it is the thing to do, no different than how people fell into the suburban pattern of living. Chuck Marhon has a good post up about this type of thinking and how it created and continues to perpetrate the suburban pattern.

While Badger may have defined herself as a pseudosuburbanist a little differently than I will here, the concepts that she discussed can also be identified as pseudosuburbanist problems. If one is comfortable with where they live, no matter what people say about the place, then the technicality of suburb vs. city vs. rural town vs. town-that-used-to-be-independent-until-a-bigger-city-sprouted-up-beside-it is irrelevant.

Let me insert a quick reminder that the real problem with our cities is that walkability, transit connectivity and safe housing are not available for everyone, no matter the income level and the skinniness of jeans.

However, to get back to the idea of PseudoSuburbanist=Hipster, we also need to address the trendiness of coming back to the city. This weekend, I attended a cultural festival that had over 5,000 attendants in a city of 270,000. That’s a picture from it at the top of the post. I think it was great that so many people came downtown, including my own mom, who hadn’t been down there in some years. Yet, are these people coming downtown for the right reasons? Would they come downtown even if it was only quirky stores? Would they come down in some places if it didn’t look like the Design District or SoHo? Will these same people who love this “downtown lifestyle” stay past their children growing older?

In some cases people are staying behind. They are improving their schools, adding playgrounds and also interacting with multiple cultures and generations.

Yet, there are far too many people who are gentrifying areas to the point that some slums now have a neo-suburban feel. Not all of this is the fault of the people themselves. It’s the fault of the old real estate adages, some of which are still codified into housing covenants. The most offensive of these adages is that Anglo=value and non-Anglo group= poor and less valuable. Also, a clean neighborhood isn’t bad, unless clean means more white people and less people of other cultures, no matter their income level or style of living.

I think this is the pseudosuburbanism and pseudohipsterism that we really need to concern ourselves with. Otherwise, here’s to hipsterism. It’s high time the mainstream culture start to accept that it’s a salad bowl and not a melting pot. And this PseudoSuburbanist concept? That wouldn’t even exist and that’s not a bad thing.

Photo above was shot by myself, with my new hipster toy of the moment, my Apple iPhone. Want to challenge my logic? Start by visiting me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

tips for urbanist living

Five Ways Government Workers and Officials Are Master Placemakers

8 Comments

On Memorial Day, we celebrate the sacrifice of the many men and women of our Armed Forces that have passed on either in battle or having lived a full civilian life. My PaPa was a World War II veteran and his presence was missed as we gathered around the table and the grill at my house yesterday.

Before everyone came over, I was sitting at my kitchen table writing in my urbanist journal and I thought about how some other, more mundane, public servants actually make our places. I’m talking about everyone from the mayors, to the town and city planners, to the grant administrators, to the classically trained government service generalists (MPA’s, MPP’s and the like) such as myself. Even people such as firefighters and police can be placemakers, as they are the ones who spearhead events like National Night Out and make sure we have safe places to go.

In essence, I came up with yet another list of five specific ways us government workers, elected officials and those of us without a fancy planning firm behind our name make or break great places.

–We are charged with creating rural and urban transit systems: Generally, we have the final say about how people get around. Drivers licenses, bike lane approval, and the number of buses or train cars are all government worker decisions.
–We can and must wrangle the political system: This includes public comment periods, concerns about Agenda 21, and just general concerns about getting ourselves into too much civic debt. Also, we may have been in a political campaign, which if done right means we shook every hand and kissed every baby in our community. We know our community and we know how to mobilize them for good will.
–We know how to finance our initiatives: Instead of drawing pretty pictures that can cost whatever it takes, we take grant allotments and make it happen on the budget we have. Often that means we get have to get the community involved or there is no project. And with tactical urbanism and other small-scale movements that incorporate elements of new urbanism, we can have a taste of full community involvement along with good urban design.
–We make laws that encourage or discourage good placemaking: The zoning code or lack of one is in our laps. Same with housing a planning department. Or the decision to go with form-based or Euclidean zoning. Plus, there’s all the behavioral laws that can encourage or discourage good placemaking.
-And finally we can turn spaces into civic spaces: We create the public parks and public squares. We protect the first amendment and allow free speech. We can also deny civil rights in our spaces. Ultimately, we hold the keys to space, unless it’s under tribal control or agreed upon to be shared in some other international agreement.

So to all my folks who are closer to the government side of the sector, take pride. Without us, there wouldn’t be a placemaking discussion at all.

I also welcome continued discussion on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Image above by Flickr user WELS.net under a Creative Commons License.

A Black Queer Feminist Urbanist Resource created and curated by Kristen E. Jeffers