Category Archives: Cityreads

Cities, Cityreads, Commons, creative class, downtown, Government

Let People Lead in Your Cities

Let People Lead in Your Cities

What if the real reason people aren’t staying in your city is that they can’t lead?  Can’t they be themselves?  They can’t make the money that they need or even the money that they want? Won’t you listen to their complaints and make changes? Won’t you treat them like adults? Do you silence them? You doubt them? You act like you don’t care?

I feel like it’s safe enough to blatantly say that I couldn’t stay in Greensboro because I’d never get paid to be my full self. Kansas City has its problems, but allowing me to be 100% my full self isn’t the problem. And that’s saying something for a city that’s very much like the city I left behind.

Read this. If you don’t see Greensboro(or any American city) in parts of this, then I’m not sure what you are seeing. I’m also starting to see a Kansas City that doesn’t want this to be their legacy. Two authors have already written about these failures, one even projecting into a not so distant future what KC could look like if we saw major effects nationwide from climate change. Even the propagator of some of the worst segregation and elitism couldn’t beat cancer. When your time is up, your time is up.

But as recent events have shown, and reminded me, a prophet is not beloved in their homeland. Maybe in the broader nation, but not in a place where one has to pay their bills. Another cliche is that you don’t poop where you eat. Well, that causes dysentery for one and two, being critical about your home can leave you on more of a Thomas Wolfe tip than a James Baldwin tip. Even Baldwin had to get out and get his head straight so he could heal through the art.

And I feel like that’s what I’m doing. I’m working on some literal art. I’m examining my surroundings with an outsider’s eye. Last week, I brought you my fantasy fiefdom. If only you could bet on it like all those fantasy sports teams.

But to reign this back in, leaders of cities and corporate overlords– you will attract employees and entrepreneurs of a certain age and look by letting them be who they are. Especially if they are making it rain for you at the job. As long as they are doing no harm, to themselves and others, what’s it to you. Or are you too busy being harmful to yourself by drowning in greed and hoarding to see that the cities that are growing fast, are letting go of the old guard thinking, the forcing into boxes, the checking off of those boxes?

And when it’s time for you to let your life live its course, you can be proud that your legacy will live on. Because we were allowed to be full humans and we have enough life to keep the planet sustaining.

#transpo, Cityreads, Education, Food, gentrification, Government, Homelessness, Housing, How-To, Kansas City, Transportation, urbanism

To Create a Perfect City

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All it took in many cities for development in the old days was one man who bought up bunches of land and started building houses on it, which he turned around and put up for sale.

One man. Probably white and already wealthy. 

Several plots of farmland. Land which used to be fields and served that purpose, is now a whole neighborhood. In the early years, these neighborhoods were connected throughout with sidewalks, with access to streetcars, with plots designated for community retail, such as a market. Many of these older style neighborhoods were still bedroom communities, but they were connected. In the case of J.C. Nichols here in KC and others, there was emphasis placed on who could and couldn’t purchase those homes, which unfortunately was codified in the federal mortgage-making code. Oh and the official history of his Country Club Plaza flat out states that he was just one man that changed the city. 

So to say that other developers and even you milling around and buying (and being sold) properties can’t change the city (or, at least a chunk of it) with your money, ideas and landownings is crazy. It really comes down to money and respect of who holds said money. Eventually, you can change your city with ideas and small investments. Eventually.

This still keeps me up at night, because unfortunately, I feel the only way to enact wholesale change on cities overnight, is to purchase wide swaths of empty land or existing properties and create my own fiefdom. Let’s chat about that fiefdom shall we?

Let’s first assume that I’m in KC and I bought up a chunk of abandoned or less-loved area East of Troost, but still in KCMO.

Restricitve covenants are illegal these days, but often rent and asking prices are such that certain people are excluded. I’d put up a for-sale sign on the residential properties and tell people the amenities and then invite them to propose a price for it. I would take millions from some and I’d hand out some for free. I’d do it lottery style, so the goal would be to get a diverse amount of people, but let Providence handle who was picked and wasn’t picked. No credit checks. Some people would get jobs handling transportation, doing landscaping, teaching at the educational campus or working at the marketplace and they would get homes that I’ll set aside for workers and families. The lottery will be for folks who don’t live in the neighborhood. 

For the transportation, Transportation to and from my fiefdom would be free and would include all types, appropriate to the context.  I’d give the money to get the Linwood streetcar built, and restore older ones. Troost and Prospect would get streetcars too. Remaining bus lines and the streetcars would have every-15-minutes bus service. There would be free car-share vehicles for trips to stores and other neighborhoods (fiefdoms). There would be bikes. And the sidewalks would be clear. If you still insist on bringing a car after I told you all this, you would have a place to park. But only if you make a compelling case to need one (you use it for your business, you are disabled and use it to cover long distances, you’re an Uber driver, you drive to a far-flung place that doesn’t have rail or bus or air service enough for you to go there as often as you need). While not directly in my KC fiefdom, I’d also donate money to get a streetcar or true light-rail (our existing vehicles can actualy do both!) to the airport. You’d start at the River Market stop, then wind your way through the Northland (possibly tunneled, possibly in the highway median), such that it’s only a 30 minute trip each way. Yes, it would go that fast too. Our  existing vehicles can safely run at 35 miles an hour.

There will be one central marketplace, which the community owns and staffs. There will be all kinds of healthy food options, with an eye to conscious omnivores on down to complete vegans. Subtracting staff salaries and real food costs, care will be made to make sure that people eat. You’d be able to get other things there too, either shipped directly to the store, to your home or inside the building. Yes, this is sounding like Walmart, but my Walmart would look like Target and pay like Costco. Actually, it would look like the City Market, because there would be room for both basic needs stores and also some fun stores. Just like homes, there will be different sizes for all. Also, services like doctors, yoga studios, and credit unions will be in this space too. 

There will be many open parks, with playgrounds and racket courts and basketball courts and even a fountain. This is KC. It seems that I must have a fountain to be a legit fiefdom.

There will also be one school, a campus if need be, that provides all that a kid would need as they grow. That includes any kid with a special need. If we can’t provide it, we will make arrangements free-of-charge for the kid to get the education they need, right by their own home. Or, if the kid was game, we’d bus them across town to another campus, which has mastered something we don’t quite have yet and gives them an opportunity to meet people who don’t live and work in their neighborhood.

But there’s a problem here. It should not take people buying up land and creating fiefdoms to provide education, food, education for all ages and all other needed and wanted services. Also, this could turn into separate-but-equal really quick, especially here in KC and in other places that still have very defined lines of where people of certain races and cultures live, exclusive of their actual income. My economics are probably way off, but I wanted to err on the side of providing homes and jobs and basic needs. I’m assuimg that I’m crazy rich already and can make up the difference.

But that’s what we have, fiefdoms, in an alliance under one city. Or in most cases, we have multiple cities, of multiple fiefdoms, doing whatever they feel like doing to provide basic services. Essentially, separate, but unequal, with a wee bit of separate-but-equal.

So what can we do?

I believe that as an alliance of cities and fiefdoms, we can set a goal to provide co-op grocery and markets, centralized and fulfilling K-12 and secondary education, and free and prompt transportation options. We can continue to provide places to gather, for various schools of thought, pending no one emerges from these meetings with the attempt to do real harm.

I think we could do this today, because these are our things that we can drop money on right now and shift the conversation and how we live.

I believe we can start looking at each other as human beings worthy of mutual respect and sympathy. I think we could switch to a system of true rehabilitation and re-training, to help those who truly have criminal minds (and not just those we THINK) do.

And housing. If we are going to spend money to build something, let us ensure our water and sewer systems are clean. Always. That there’s always a place to go when we are sick and going there doesn’t automatically bankrupt us and won’t bankrupt us down the line. We provide basic shelter, maybe communal at first, then small dwellings to people on a sliding scale. Then, because we’ve stopped servicing some of our other social welfare issues as hard or as inadequately as we were doing, we can zero in on the problems with costs and making sure people have adequate roofs, at the privacy level they so desire.

No city is perfect. Yet, we cannot keep going with the inadequate ones we are fielding today. And we cannot end with separate but equal.

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Cityreads, Greensboro, Kansas City, placemaking, planning, urbanism

Three Lessons I Learned About Place in 2015

Three Lessons I Learned About Place in 2015

I learned a lot about place this year. Yet, those many lessons coalesced into these three big lessons: a progressive, inclusive, tactical charrette process, people over money and the need to legally live in more than one place, to help you guys out there learn more about your own towns and cities. Let’s dig into those lessons.

You Can Have a Progressive, Inclusive, Tactical Charrette Process

I was invited to come to Chattanooga back in April to participate in the Next Big Thing, a design charrette centered on the Glass Street area of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Having grown up and really come up politically in Greensboro, cities like Chattanooga and Greenville, SC are aspirational places to the governments and stakeholders of other smaller cities like Greensboro. In fact, a delegation of Greensboro folks was in town doing a comparison shopping tour, while I was there working on a lesser-loved area of town.

Despite its status as lesser loved and its lack of waterfront view and mountain height, the Glass Street area doesn’t lack for good people and good infrastructure. The group that brought us all together, The Glass House Collective, is embedded and dedicated to the betterment of this community.

On the surface, the Glass Street area seems like your typical predominately black community, that as a result of redlining and legal integration, has a double whammy of having good housing stock, but not being a place that even Blacks of means want to invest in. Well, besides liquor stores, clubs, and various houses of worship, that, unfortunately, don’t work together and have even been the sites of murders and thefts.

Yet, there was this diner, The Glass Street Breakfast and Lunch House, on the corner of Glass and Dodson, across the street from the building where we set up shop. The woman who owns it wasn’t on my team, but I could see and feel her energy and excitement throughout the process. All of our teams had community members, mostly Black property owners and other stakeholders local to the area. What was also key, was that there were a number of other Black American planners and group facilitators. There were white Chattanoogans from the other sides of town, who wanted to see a sustainable development (more on this dynamic later in the post). Yet, it was seeing this Black woman, believe in the power of her building, which outside of the fresh paint job, with the mural of the yummy-looking bowl of something on the outside, was nothing more than an old gas station, which in another context could look like a shack, that inspired me myself to look into the power of taking buildings and spaces, no matter their shape, and infuse value into them.

Even if her venture ultimately fails (as more ventures do, despite the race and energy level of their owners), it’s the intent, the ability to try. Oh and I hear her food was awesome. I was, unfortunately, battling the need to drive back down I-75 to make my flight and return my rental car at the Atlanta airport because flying into Chattanooga’s airport was nothing short of impractical, so I couldn’t try her food out. (Another problem for another day, like the need for someone to help her out with a website).

More on people-power later, on the big scale. At the root of this lesson is that you can have energy in the room and people, especially the people of color and low-wealth that may be in your charrette room, are just as powerful and can add just as much to your charrette process, as you. Even if you have a foot in both the elite, mostly white and wealthy, architecture, planning and development world and another in the mostly black neighborhoods, labeled as slums and ghettos even if there were at one point rich cultural assets, you can be valued and you can be heard in the charrette room. Charrettes, public workshops and other community listening processes have to have this going forward and they have to have a means of action.

In the meantime, I needed to not just see places, but immerse myself in places for longer than just a week…

You Can’t Really Be a Global, or Even Just a National Urbanist, If You’ve Only Lived in One State

Ultimately, I can come into a city and tell people what to do 365 days a year. I could do it on this blog 24 hours a day. It, however, doesn’t compare to actually being a resident and investing in two metro areas, if not three, simultaneously.

This is the first year that I’ve ever lived in two cities. Even when I was younger and going back and forth between the Piedmont Triad and the Research Triangle (they are different, if you click on their names you’ll know why they are different), I was still in the same state. I could get most of the same food (although Biscuitville is a uniquely Greensboro thing and Bojangles only hands out free sweet tea at their Triangle-area locations). I knew the names of the local politicos. I knew my sales tax rate. My license plates were the same (and there was only need for one of them). School districts tend to cover counties, not just a pod of a couple of elementary schools that feed into one middle and high school. Cities tend to only extend to county lines and if they do jump a line, it’s only a few blocks or a few neighborhoods.

Kansas City takes up pieces of four different counties. That’s just on the Missouri side. On the Kansas side, what we refer to as KCK, is also the entirety, save a place called Bonner Springs, of the county of Wyandotte. And then there’s everything wrapped up in Johnson County and the areas around the University of Kansas and the military operations. Having been East Coast-centered my whole life, I only knew of DC’s interesting position of being a bi-state metro area. Likewise with the New York City region. Charlotte’s also rapidly becoming as much a South Carolina major metro, much like Western Kansas propels that state’s entire economy.

To me, being a bi-state, bi-county area isn’t so bad, if you have a completely connected public transit system, so everyone has equal access to jobs. Likewise, when your school curriculums and calendars and resources are in sync. When you have the same tax rates and the same mix of national stores. Your local institutions are empowered and service the area equally. I have yet to see that in many regions and I feel like the communities I know and love back east do this better than the KC metro. It’s one thing to have a frontier/pioneer spirit. It’s another to have it so bad that you can’t be interdependent, much like the folks who were native to the land you built on.

Having lived in a totally different region, I feel like I have more fodder for writing this blog and my planning and development practice than ever before. I can properly compare the effects of how public policy, especially housing, tax and education policy, shape a city’s development. It’s deeper than those city trips where they show you all the pretty things. I was doing a radio pre-show interview and the producers asked me to describe Kansas City for a person hopping off at the airport and going to the convention hall. I think we can all do that, even if our only relationship to a city is going to its airport and convention hall. (Bonus aside, read my case for a new Kansas City Airport). But you have to go deeper than that if you are like me and you are involved in the development and maintenance of your city.

I also re-introduced and fortified the concept this year of the American Expat. Before, it was something I knew about in abstraction, having had several aunts and uncles who’d moved away for work and only came home at major holidays. There are parts of both metros that they love and embrace, so much so that I think my aunt may never move back to North Carolina.

For me, I’m still in the city audition process. Ultimately, I know that wherever I choose to plant my home base, it will have 75% of the values and things I recommend out of the gate. Or, it will have a solid group of people, committed to sustaining it and making it better. I will always come back to North Carolina and rejuvenate, due to this being my homeland and that of so many people I love and who helped me grow in my formative years.  Speaking of the content and concept of people sustaining a place, though…

Money is Magic, People are Sustaining

If we had millions of dollars, everything we want to happen on Glass Street (and your street) could happen tomorrow. However, a lot of the things that were proposed for Glass Street, like the street and sidewalk improvements, as well as the façade improvements and the addition of more than just tax preparers, liquor stores and some solid restaurants, require PEOPLE to patronize the store and bring the money to them.

The Glass Street area was labeled as a food desert, due to the loss of a grocery store, ironically right behind the Glass Street Breakfast and Lunch House. In my group in Chattanooga, I introduced the idea of a co-op grocery, something that’s happening twice in Greensboro, in two very different contexts. Many people are  familiar with our downtown natural food co-op market and deli/bakery, as a natural extension of a community supported agriculture delivery membership and provider of a downtown option, which is still not where developers want it to be to do a traditional supermarket concept. You may also be familiar with our other co-op, founded due to the lack of a major supermarket company, wanting to locate where it had no problems operating 30 years ago, a mostly Black, middle-class community. With some financial help from a local Black church and our city and the usual major foundation nonprofits with mostly white leadership, that community has funded a supermarket that will look more like Harris Teeter or at the very least, restore some of the character that the Winn-Dixie left.

While they are still waiting on the magic of money to come through, they are a determined group of people, a lesson that as we also honor the Kwanzaa week, is relevant in placemaking and all year.

Right now, city leaders and stakeholders are waiting on money to turn a once vibrant, but now vacant lot into our next Broadway-caliber performing arts center. Much money was pledged for this effort and they’ve unfortunately come up short. In turn, they are calling on people and their money, to help get this spot to the end. In the meantime, there were lots of people doing business on this big lot. There were a gas station and hospital and hotel here once upon a time. Then, just before demolition, there was a jazz club and doctors offices and hair salons and the chamber of commerce. I feel those things could have remained on that lot until the last dollar needed was in hand and then the demolition could start and within just a few short months, the new arts building would appear. (Edit on 12/31/15: The chamber is in fact still standing. But just barely. The building almost has no parking lot. Again, an institution that helps us to be capitalist can stand, but some aspects of capital can’t stand and we still don’t have the art we were promised. Hopefully, the money will be raised, but until then, I use caution in talking about this particular project as an economic driver and a value-add to Downtown Greensboro).

This gets me to a major lesson I want us all to learn this year and in coming years, to get back to a simple economy, where we can start paying things in full. Granted, the credit economy is what allowed us to grow as even things we take for granted, such as our rail system and certain shopping malls needed mortgages and loans to get started. Yet, what if even back then, people valued things at whatever could be given at the time? What if we made all houses less than $5,000? There could be variation in the market, but the idea is that things like houses, modes of transportation and education have a basic cost, that is keeping in mind that people need these things to get started as adults. Then, over time, other things could be valued more. While I don’t think we need to eliminate capitalism or financing systems like loans and mortgages, I think we need to become more people-centered with how we spend and loan money and less about creating magic tricks with our money.
Next week, we are in 2016 and I’ll be dropping my wishes for the year and evaluating how some of my 2015 wishes did. Let me know what some of your placemaking lessons were on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn on my pages or at least, share this article with your own commentary on those social networks. Keep up with me on a regular basis through my Tuesday emails.

Cities, Cityreads, urbanism

How Does Your City Do the Holidays?

How Does Your City Do the Holidays?

We are just 10 days from Christmas and we just finished Hanukkah a couple of days ago. Throughout October-January, people will celebrate more than they have all year it seems, at least on a national scale. How has that manifested in different cities? What are some of the holiday traditions you’ve observed. I’ll share a handful and invite you to share yours in the comments and on various social media channels.

The Forever Mall Santa–The Friendly Center Santa, Greensboro, NC

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Santa waves out to greet shoppers at Friendly Center, Greensboro, NC

I couldn’t crank this up without sharing one of the first major public displays of Christmas I grew up with, the Friendly Center Santa. This guy has waved at people for as long as I’ve been alive (30 years) and I know for much longer. He’s also been remarkably standing at that same spot, although what surrounds him has gone through some dramatic changes (in the picture shown, he’s standing next to Belk, but when I was born, he would have been standing in the same spot next to Harris Teeter). Accompanied by some wreaths on the light poles and the tram to cart people around (because re-parking is almost impossible this time a year, here’s to some early transit-related memories for me), this signaled Christmas’s arrival at what has become our premier shopping mall in Greensboro.

The Neighborhood Carol of the Balls–The Sunset Hills Balls,Greensboro, NC

About a mile and some change from Friendly Center, the Sunset Hills neighborhood hangs those Christmas light balls, not just in their smaller, newer trees, but the huge, stories-tall ones that overarches their neighborhood, which dates to the turn of the 20th century. Growing organically over the years, now the neighborhood boasts a 5K run and has been featured in national publications (you know, ones that unlike mine don’t have a personal tie to the city), for its uniqueness.

The Life-sized Hallmark Keepsake Village–The Plaza Lights, Kansas City, MO

Plaza Lights, by Flickr User Franklin D. Thompson
Plaza Lights, by Flickr User Franklin D. Thompson

In my first few weeks here, dead in the middle of the summer, folks were telling me to get ready for the Plaza lights, no sooner than the sun sets on the same day we  gave thanks and ate some form of turkey. Sure enough, despite heavy rains this year, people came out to see them be turned on for the first time and I’ve driven through several times over the last few days. Kansas City is home of Hallmark and you can see where they got the idea of their Christmas villages from when you see this spot. It’s literally a life-size version, with Spanish Revival undertones. The lights stay on each night until 3 a.m. and will be lit nightly until well into January.

The Central Outdoor Ice Rink Made of Synthetic Ice– Greensboro, KC, Your Town Too, Even If It’s 70 Degrees Outside.

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Skating in Downtown Greensboro, December 14, 2011

It used to just be Rockefeller Center. Now, at least for the last 4 years, we’ve skated outside somewhere in the proximity of downtown, the lifestyle center, the corporate redevelopment with the extra mall tacked on, with plastic palm trees in the back ground, etc. For a girl who grew up on her roller skates and adored figure skaters in prior Winter Olympics, it’s fun to pretend to be doing a freestyle skate routine in the middle of town. Of any of the holiday traditions listed above, this is one that’s pretty universal it seems, at least in the past few years.

Centralized Christmas Trees and Major Parades– Everywhere

Who doesn’t have a town, that doesn’t have a town Christmas tree, or if there’s no central major Christmas tree, there’s at least a holiday parade. Not that these things aren’t unique, but I feel they are one of the easiest ways towns and cities honor the winter holidays.

Finally, not to leave Hanukkah out– 2nd Night Plane Drop, Greensboro, NC

Greensboro’s Center City Park held a plane drop of treats for kids and kids at heart on the 2nd night of Hanukkah this year at the Center City Park, in the shadow of the city’s Christmas tree. The two holidays seemed to merge a bit this year, as the city’s tree went with solid golden lights, essentially like the candles on a menorah. Makes sense as both Jewish and Christian businessmen paid an equal part in building many of the companies that have made Greensboro what it is today. I’ve also heard about a number of life-sized menorahs in city squares.

And of course, New Year’s Eve, what do you drop?

The Raleigh Acorn Drop. By Ke4roh (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
The Raleigh Acorn Drop. By Ke4roh (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
In Raleigh, my beloved college hometown, it’s an acorn, in honor of Raleigh being the City of Oaks. That story you heard about the possum drop, that’s true too, although the poor guy sounds like he’s getting a break this year. Another nearby Eastern North Carolina town drops a pickle, to honor its status as a major pickle mill town. And if your town isn’t dropping anything to countdown to midnight, you can always borrow Times’ Square’s ball. Although, now that I live in the Central time zone, I’m not sure how that will work. I will be back east for New Years Eve though.

So again, that’s how the cities I’ve lived in and a handful of others, do the holidays. Let me know how you celebrate?

Cityreads, placemaking, Retail, tips for urbanist living

My Ultimate Urbanist Gift Guide

My Ultimate Urbanist Gift Guide

 

This year I decided to go ahead and talk about how to buy gifts. I feel this list can be applied to any time a year and any holiday. After all, these things are unique and they’re always greatly appreciated by any urbanist I know. I would ask your urbanist for some guidance because they may want some things more than others. Shall we get started?

Books

Especially textbooks. For the longest time I though like my urbanist practice was dependent on just how much I was able to write and how profound that writing was. Maybe it was because I came from an academic background in studying community and economic development plus having hung around architecture and design departments in the past. I’ve always written books, even before I was writing about urbanism. And so it seems has everybody else that I meet up with at conferences and who actually speaks say conferences. Also textbooks are expensive and if you’re not a student anymore it’s true but not quite starchitect level, you’ll squee anytime you get an actual book.

Experiences

This can be anything from plane tickets hotel gift certificate/rooms, show tickets, food and restaurant gift certificates, and transit passes. As much as you think we already have all the hip urban stuff, again a free ticket to a hot show like Hamilton in New York is super valuable. Bonus points if it’s something like a house tour or a transit tour that’s not normally open to the public or only happens rarely.

Things to Make or Make With

I know this one is really cliché but still who doesn’t like Lego architecture sets or model train sets. For those who are more realistic in their building and making , gift certificates to home-improvement stores, art and craft stores and home design stores as well as museum stores also work well. Or you can buy specific supplies like nice pens, markers, pencils or paper.

Clothing Actually Made for Commuting

This goes beyond a pair of sneakers that match a formal suit. This gets into rain coats that actually wick off water, shirts and pants and skirts that breathe and come with pockets and undergarments that keep things you don’t want to see out of sight. Also, leisure weekend wear like bike kits is nice too. Again, ask your urbanist, but they’ll be glad you’ve considered their commuting habits in the first place.

Donations to Organizations that Support Urbanism

They are probably getting those notices already to donate to their favorite charities related to these different issues and causes. They may also be the type that has everything that we’ve already listed above. So how about just going ahead and sending all good chunk of money to an organization that they care about, namely the one for whom they work. That way, not only do they benefit but their home city and the causes that they care a lot about do as well.

You may notice that I’ve not actually listed places to get these items. I leave it up to you to choose vendors,books, nonprofits, stores and experiences that speak to the even deeper held values of your individual placemaker. I’ve also listed vague categories of items, again, because I want you to still exercise some creativity. Know that you can and will find the perfect gift for your placemaker.

 

 

Cityreads, Kansas City, Politics of Place, urbanism

What Should Cities Give Us?

What Should Cities Give Us?

What should cities give us? Safety? Diversity? A place to live? A place to work? Places to eat? Places to learn?

This is the time of year where across the world, we turn our attention to gifts and what we can give people and what we have been given.

While this week marked the beginning of the church year and the season of giving that many Christian churches mark as Advent, representing the gift of the Christ-child, a more secular beginning also happened this weekend, as this weekend’s trifecta of Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday marked the beginning of the major buying season. While the origins of why the days after Thanksgiving (plus now Giving Tuesday, which is today) have become THE ABSOLUTE DAYS YOU MUST SHOP AND GIVE OR ELSE are a bit muddy, the ideas of giving and getting are as old as time.

Since this is a city blog (and since I thanked cities last week in honor of the United States celebration of Thanksgiving), I wanted to take the time and mention three things this week that cities should give us, if they want us to think of themselves as cities.

Basic Needs

If you are calling yourself a city or town, legally or for the sake of a marketing brochure and you don’t have a health clinic, a school or system of schools or even just a library that can educate people from 0-100, a place where people can either sell their wares and make a living or make wares for someone else and get a paycheck, then you aren’t a city. Also, I’d add that you need a variety of housing at different sizes and price points. You may be a  community without these things, maybe even a village, but not a city.

Most of the major cities we think about are nation-states, even in a country like the US that also grants a federal and state layer of governance on top of their cities. In regions like the one I currently reside in (and our Nations’s Capital), the city and its suburbs cross multiple state and county lines, yet function together as a symbiotic whole.

Yet, some of these legal cities and towns are just neighborhoods with a civic building or some other bare minimum standard of being a legal entity capable of taxing or not taxing people. Let’s not even start with how many of these places have created school districts, police and fire departments and still legal means of housing discrimination such as only selling homes in a certain price range, to try to control their populations.

While I don’t like what you are doing if that’s the kind of municipality you are, I’ll give you a pass if you stop calling yourself a city. If you want to be a city, open yourself up to providing the basics, plus diversity, which I’ll explain in the next section.

Diversity

While there are plenty of homogenous neighborhoods, especially in countries like the US, Canada, France and Australia that have grown into cities by adding those basic needs I just mentioned above, I think some neighborhoods still lack the capacity to be a city.

A city allows people to come into it with whatever they have and contribute that service or product. Again, it provides the basic needs, so that a person can then contribute their unique contribution. For example, a cupcake baker sets up shop. They know that their kids, if they have them, can go to school. They themselves can get some extra educational help because some sort of adult learning experience exists, even if it’s just a public library or a culinary school.

A city is also not afraid of the variety of people it has. Actual, known criminals are dealt with, in a way that doesn’t strip them of their humanity, but helps them get back to life after learning some lessons. There are housing types at every size and price level. The difference in housing comes in basic, safe, bare minimum functions and high-end, luxury finishes. Far too many developers and cities are trying to build luxury-only and they wonder why we have a housing crisis. Same with groceries, hair salons and sadly hospitals, clinics and schools. Paying extra should be an enrichment and entertainment experience, not a do-or-die thing.

One would say that schools are winning at diversity, at least when you look at a metro area. However, that diversity diminishes when you have different school districts, with different tax rates, yet in a close geographic area. I believe that school systems that incorporate a singular taxing entity and operate on a county level or in partnership with more than one county, especially if the city extends into said county, do better.

Having one pot of money, plus one centralized superintendent, with regional superintendents, lifts up the value of the entire district. Instead of writing off schools in poorer neighborhoods, the school system is seen as a common good and outside of PTA money and other grants that go to schools on a more individual basis, the district as a whole invests the same amount of money and the same level of basic resources such as buildings and textbooks into the system as a whole. But I could digress here. Schools have their own thing going on and I’m planning on writing more about them at a future date. Let’s move on the final city need, mobility.

Mobility

If your citizens can’t navigate on two feet (or in a motorized wheelchair) safely, you’ve failed the first test of city mobility. The second test is if your citizens can cycle safely, on more than residential streets. The third test is if the transportation you provide, connects all major regions and neighborhoods, in a timely manner, for able-bodied people, not just for folks to who you are mandated to provide curb-side service.

Many cities are failing at the mobility piece. It’s part of why I’m in the line of work I’m in, to push the needle forward in having adequate ways to get around.

Plus, on a romantic level, so many cities are associated with their transit and transportation systems. These entities are often stand alone characters in the books and shows and movies that highlight a particular city. One example that comes to the top of my head is the movie Coming to America and how the subway seemed to shut the door on a romance. Getting out of the movies, I’ve heard many stories of people who don’t date people who live on a certain train line because it takes time to get to that part of New York. Yet, at least they can take the train. Think of how many people consider long-distance relationships the inability to drive an hour or two. Think of folks like me who regularly meet a significant other at the other end of a cross-country flight or train ride.

Think of not having anything but the open highway to get us where we need to go. Yet, everybody can’t drive. Every trip, especially those “glass-of-milk-on-the-corner” trips should not be a car trip. Some cities are even seeing property values rise when they put in things like streetcars. Yet, transportation entities should lift all boats, not just the ones in the special district where the cars will run.

But what about governance?

You may notice governance is missing in what cities should give, at least in the bullet points above. Here’s the thing, it doesn’t take much to be governed. Even if you claim to be stateless and off the grid, some entity, even if it’s just the federal government, will eventually show up at your yurt and tell you these are the rules you have to follow. Essentially you don’t have to live in a city to be a citizen.

Yet, if an entity wants to incorporate itself, and tax its residents above and beyond what federal and states are doing, then this is what my tax dollars should go to ensuring. Also, if tax dollars are going to some businesses, there should be a central entity, much like the school board governs schools and the city council handles basic city workings like fire, police and water, maybe power and telecommunications, that governs how much and when any company can ask for tax abatements or unrestricted grant money from the city.

I believe that so many lawsuits and a major cause of political debate and contention could be eliminated if we didn’t give out tax incentives based on what we perceive would be a major investment. Instead, we could support our own companies, so they can make a decent living at places like the City Market shown above.

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So that’s what I think cities should give us. I’d be remiss during this season of giving (and wishes) if I didn’t mention the gifts I have for you. A year ago today, I published my first print volume of essays and blogs A Black Urbanist: Essays Vol. 1. Yet I’ve felt like I need to print more, not just of that book, but more of my writings in general. While I’m still working a major full-length volume, in the meantime, I’m launching The Black Urbanist Monthly. For $25 a month, starting in January of 2016 you’ll get a print magazine edition of the blog, with both stories and images that you can take offline and share with your colleagues. The first five people to sign up will get a free, signed copy of A Black Urbanist: Essays Vol. 1.  Also, your subscription will help me continue to grow my writing, podcasting and in-person speaking and training opportunities. Learn more and sign up here.

Cityreads, urbanism

Why I’m Grateful for Cities

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Why I'm Grateful for Cities

Just in time for the United States Thanksgiving celebration this week, I want to positively but honestly, give thanks to cities for what they do well and right. So why am I thankful for cities?

Public Libraries

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Big Books by Flickr user Tim Samoff

You may have seen the above picture on some social media site. It’s actually the parking garage of the central branch of the Kansas City (MO) library. There are many other branches. Some of them are open daily. Some aren’t. Some are open late, some aren’t. However, that doesn’t always matter because there are plenty of books, events and even a coffee-house at one branch for me to use. Books have always been a refuge for me. I have fond memories of my mom taking me to our nearest branch, as well as doing summer reading programs. I’ll talk more about my actual education later, but the school library has always been a good friend and in this time of transition in my life, I can’t help but thank my new public library for helping me adjust. And having great architecture, which adds to the greater placemaking value of the city.

Public transit that comes on its own rails 

Looking back at San Francisco from the Rockridge Station in Oakland. Image by Malcolm Kenton
Looking back at San Francisco from the Rockridge Station in Oakland. Image by Malcolm Kenton

I’m aware of every recent DC Metro problem. Really, I am. But I can still plan around most of the lines being on time. They ride on their own rails, therefore other traffic doesn’t hold them up. In the industry, we call this kind of transit fixed-guideway. The idea is that it’s fixed to one clear path and therefore you can plan its movements and know exactly where it is at a certain point. There are buses that simulate this, but often they don’t ride in their own lanes and they move at the speed of the driver. Streetcars are also technically fixed to the ground, but they are in mixed traffic and driven, so they also have this issue. Anyway, transit in theory comes on a schedule, you plan around that schedule and you can propel yourself with your two legs or a bike in combination or in lieu of transit. Still, I don’t have to worry about car maintenance or parking it. Well, I do, but one day I could give it up and lean on public transit, because cities provide that.

Unique cultural experiences 

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Spinning Mothers sign in front of the Contemporary Art Museum in Chicago in November of 2012. Photo by the author.

Someone recently changed the sign on the front of Greensboro’s Elsewhere to whereelse. That’s how I’ve always felt about that place. So much so I made it a key part of my going-away celebration and I looked longingly at pictures from this year’s fundraiser for the arts space. Every city needs to have a quirky space, whether it’s explicitly art or explicitly about bringing together marginalized people or if it’s just fun but unique like that flying pig I saw in Cincy a few weeks ago or this swinging banner that says Mothers in front of Chicago’s Contemporary Art Museum that I saw three years ago this month! Also, Elsewhere has worked really hard thanks to grant monies to improve several vacant lots near its Downtown Greensboro building, many of which despite downtown’s renaissance have not seen their property values rise. Now, they’ve risen in a more organic and people-focused way.

My education 

Image from the 2015 Homecoming on the Free Expression Tunnel on the Campus of N.C. State University. Image via the N..C. State Alumni Association Facebook Page
Image from the 2015 Homecoming on the Free Expression Tunnel on the Campus of N.C. State University. Image via the N..C. State Alumni Association Facebook Page

I’ve said it before that I learned my urbanism in college. This is because both my campuses provided such a great community. There were social issues, much like  many campuses are having now. But I’m proud to say that we have leadership and even fellow students who want our actual campus to be a safe space, a learning space, a growing space. However, I’m thankful the most that I finished school before the mass gentrification around both campuses. I feel like the neighborhoods surrounding our schools are just as important and because it is college after all, let it be a little grungy or at the very least middle-class so professors and service workers can also live nearby like students.  I’m also thankful for my K-12 education in the Guilford County School system. That it was just one system was the cause of concern of many parents over the years, but making the two major city systems and the county system one has created a better funding environment and a sense of unity that all students in the county are worthy. Also, the graduation rates have been climbing for the past six years.

So that’s my gratitude practice for cities for this year. Do you have any things you want to thank cities for? Tag them #thankmycity and I’ll be on the lookout to share them. Also, subscribe to my email list to keep up with me and where I’m at both on an off line.

Cityreads, Greensboro, Kansas City

The Life and Death of City Cool

The Life and Death of City Cool

Should we even worry about residential gentrification, when in a few years, the very people who make certain blocks hot, don’t even care about those blocks anymore? Is that something that only those of means and of the right color have to worry about? Do people rebuild the cultures that die in new places or do they just hang up their guitars and stop singing along to songs?

As I prepare to spend the holidays back in Greensboro, I want to think about what that means. At the beginning of November, it started to dawn on me that only had a few more weeks to endure Kansas City, at least for 2015.

In the midst of that thought, the Royals won the World Series. People started running through the streets (ok, about a handful of drunk guys jogged down my sidewalk) and the mood that had already been heightened by buildings turning blue at night, became even more electric.

I got a chance to express how I felt about Kansas City and some of the other issues I encountered here on the local NPR last week. On the other hand, I’d written a few months ago  about how I was happy to be here in Kansas City.

Even he knows when to hit the road. Image by Flickr user Caren Pilgrim
Even he knows when to hit the road. Image by Flickr user Caren Pilgrim

I can relate to the fickleness of a city being cool.

Especially after Allen Johnson, the head of the editorial page over at the Greensboro News and Record (who so graciously allowed me to write this about a time when I felt like Greensboro was dying and needed to come back to life), wrote his own reflection about what it used to mean to go Uptown.

That brought back my parents’ relayed memories of what it meant when Greensboro was Uptown and all the major department and other stores thrived there. Both Johnson and my parents echoed that there were still some remnants of people not being treated well or served well, but the atmosphere was festive. All three mention a shift in activity, when it happened and how they lived through the transformation.

My own memories of the fun of going through abandoned storefronts, seeing eveyrone in the city on various festival days as a child, teen and young adult and finally, living in downtown and all the happy moments that came from it, along with the trying times of feeling like others didn’t want me around or my income bracket didn’t really belong there.

Then I read this note, from a writer in the New York Times, who reminds us that cool is subjective, even if we don’t always like to admit it. This paragraph stuck out so much to me, I had to think about it even stronger.

I can sympathize. But I think there’s more to these “the city is dead now” complaints than money. People have pronounced St. Marks Place dead many times over the past centuries — when it became poor, and then again when it became rich, and then again when it returned to being poor, and so on. My theory is that the neighborhood hasn’t stopped being cool because it’s too expensive now; it stops being cool for each generation the second we stop feeling cool there. Any claim to objectivity is clouded by one’s former glory.

She goes on to admonish someone who claims that people don’t brunch anymore, by telling her in so many words that she only hates brunch because brunch doesn’t work for her anymore. Not that it’s not making money for businesses and defining New York City for other people in a positive way.

I will say, her piece has a degree of privilege baked in. It assumes that people find a new place to live and they re-sew all those cool things that used to be somewhere else. It assumes that the government or a landlord didn’t want you out. (Speaking of which, ProPublica wants to know about you New Yorkers with unfair rents).

However, when it comes to certain areas, areas like New York that still continue to attract tourists, propel businesses and even house people, I wonder if some of our concerns, the ones not attached to pure gentrification, are valid.

I only got to eat here once in DC and it was excellent. It's gone now. Does that make DC less cool? Won't somebody step up in a city that has that kind of wealth and create something new and similar and better?
I only ate here once in DC and it was excellent. It’s gone now. Does that make DC less cool? Won’t somebody step up in a city that has that kind of wealth and create something new and similar and better?

As much as we like certain restaurants, no matter where they are, many close down. We outgrow certain activities because we are no longer of a certain size or age. Some of those cool activities were destructive and moving away from them makes sense.

Again, as I’ve said before, subjective measures like this do not excuse city governments from providing basic services like transit, trash collection, medical, fire and even policing. City coolness is at the top of the Mazlow hierarchy, primarily because those other things I just mentioned are at the bottom.

But if you are at the top of the hierarchy and complaining about something not feeling right. By all means, do, as I encouraged you in this previous post. Do remember though, that “cool” is very subjective and it’s one of many valid feelings one can have about a space.

Only time will tell if your block, your city routine, where you need to live, will stand the test of your time.

Cityreads, Sports

Sportsball as Community Ball as My Ball

Sportsball as Community Ball as My Ball

We are all Royal. At least we are in Kansas City right now. In both the spirit of the World Series win, me being nostalgic over different pieces of my writing and the fact that IT IS NOW BASKETBALL SEASON, I’m re-working this piece and adding a bit more context around what I’ve seen happen in KC this year and what I already know about my own sportsball fandom. Let’s play ball!

Sports build community. From pride-of-their-suburb Little League teams to pulse-of-their-city World Series pennant holders to that proud handful of farmhouses who raised that NASCAR driver, sports makes a community.

I grew up in a pre-Carolina Panthers, original Charlotte Hornets, retiring Richard Petty, saying hello to Stormy, but never to a Major League Baseball team of it’s own, Greensboro, NC (also known as Tournament Town).

There were these two mystery Coke (and yes, they were actually Coca-Cola) cans in the hall closet next to my bedroom door. One of them looked normal enough, it was bright red and had white lettering. It did have a wolf-head, and the words National Champions 1983 on them. Clearly, that wasn’t so normal. The other one was bright blue and nobody’s soda came in a bright blue can. The ram’s head and the 1982 national championship it honored wasn’t that weird.

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Food cans to support your basketball team aren’t that weird where I’m from. Photo by the author.

I tried being a NASCAR fan for five seconds. No lasting interest in watching cars go around a track. Baseball’s just so much better in person, plus, our beloved Grasshoppers are really the benchwarmers for the Miami Marlins. Too many degrees of separation[Hold this thought, we’ll get back to it soon, in this version].

The Charlotte professional men’s basketball team should have never stopped being the Hornets. Major League Soccer shouldn’t give up on us. Having your football team see the inside of a Super Bowl isn’t too shabby though and hockey’s decent. The Canes do have a Stanley Cup, so I’ve felt what it’s like to have your team be national champions. However, I much rather be at the PNC Arena when the normal HVAC system is operating and I can yell out Wolf and be met with a resounding Pack.

And when your arch rivals are only a few miles away, but still get major airplay on ESPN, this is how you choose your favorite sport. I’m a proud alumna of N.C. State University. That is how I chose my team.

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The only court that matters in my world.  Photo by the author.

And so bracket time is like my Super Bowl. In the weeks leading up to the Big Dance, I’m dancing around my TV at home, watching all the conference tournaments. I’m paying more attention to games when I’m out at networking socials at bars. I’m wearing red, lots of red. And I’m more than ready to make more than one bracket and explain to you why I did.

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But that’s March. Now it’s November. If you’ve been following me on Facebook and Twitter these past few weeks, there haven’t been a lot of posts about N.C. State anything, besides a brief one about homecoming. I am proud of the football team doing so well, but they did just lose said homecoming. Business as usual.

I’ve been in a city for almost five months now, that has a handful of college teams of prominence, but none that tickle my fancy the way my Wolfpack do. I hear the Big 12 tournament turns KC into tournament town, we shall see about that.

But this is November. In November, one of those professional teams that plays hundreds of games from April through October with a bat and a ball has beat all the other teams like that that use a bat and a ball. This year, that team is the Kansas City Royals.

When it comes to the National League, because of my affinity for DC, I’m pretty settled on the Washington Nationals as my primary team. If I have to pick a New York team, it’s the Mets. Chicago, the Cubs for the sake of the underdogs. My family members that do follow MLB tend to be Braves fans.

But the reality is, outside of that, prior to this year, as I said above, I was more a fan of the ballpark experience. My first Royals game this year was just that. I was moving to Kansas City, I like going to ballparks, they did go to the World Series last year, let’s check it out.

Now mind you, I have a significant other who can spit out stats and knows all the rules. That also helps.

At this point, let’s get back to that idea that sports build community. When I was thinking about that World Series pennant holder in the first paragraph, I was thinking about the Royals, not the Nats. I’d seen all the #beroyal tweets last year, seemingly from everyone I knew in KC at the time, which was only a handful of folks, and they didn’t seem especially sports crazy.

But I was wrong and now I understand. I’m also going to go ahead and say it: as far as the feelings they invoke and the frenzy they cause, the Royals are Duke and Carolina basketball rolled up into one pretty bow.

The Royals even use both blues, which makes my dressing to support them so much easier. Despite my status as a proud Ms. Wolfpacker, blue, in any shade, is my favorite color and color to wear.

Again, what makes the Royals fandom and playing style like Tobacco Road, despite the fact that there’s a difference in sport, region and level of competition, is that people care so much. I Facebooked this article out Sunday night, just before the game started.

The article shows where the two World Series teams gained new fans this year. The Mets fandom reads like the NYC diaspora. The Royals fandom is centered on a huge blue blob in the dead center of the country. If it weren’t for these Royals, it seems, some of these states out here would have no major national attention, at least the sports world.

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The map itself. Image by Josh Katz and Kevin Quealy for the New York Times The Upshot Blog

Again, outside of the Kansas, Wichita State, Kansas State and Missouri dominance in various sports in their respective leagues there would be nothing that excites the nation about Kansas City sports. The Chiefs don’t consistently dominate enough, at least not in this era. And neither did the Royals, until last year. In fact, they’ve not won a World Series in my lifetime. Until now.

And when your city turns blue at night and you like blue and everybody, from either side of Troost, the state line, the River, the Plaza, inside 435, outside 435, even back home tell you they want to see the Royals win and then celebrate when they do?

Yeah, I might have to be #foreveroyal. Meanwhile, it’s time to #surviveandadvance. Maybe if the Royals can come back from the 80s, the Wolfpack can too.

Also, as a P.S., check out this New York Times article by an Overland Park native, on what it feels like on the ground to have this win here. I’ll also try to Periscope from the parade, but at the very least check me out on there on Wednesday at 5:30 Central for a recap of what I saw, I’ll be tweeting pictures and finally, I’m going to be on Open Source with Christopher Lydon this week talking about Boston, as well. Check your iTunes and your local listings for that.

Cities, Cityreads, urbanism, walking

Reflections on the Fifth Anniversary of the Black Urbanist, from Kristen

Reflections on the 5th Anni of the Black Urbanist from Kristen

I am Kristen Jeffers. I call myself the Black Urbanist.

I started doing so five years ago today (October 16, 2010), because I felt like not enough conversations on the built environment, on civic spaces, on transportation, were actually including people like me (Black, young, woman, cisgender, straight, U.S. Southeastern, Christian) in conversations as a participant in the process of creating and building infrastructure. If you hear about me, it’s because I’m the main person using your Section 8 housing or because of my college degree and birth year. Or, I’m your gentrifier and your cash cow to make your development legacy different from your father’s.

It’s still a necessary conversation. Every day I read articles that highlight the disparities of different groups of people, that argue for and against actual integration and common community development. House prices are rising. People are dying on their own blocks and stoops because the police (and some neighbors) don’t think they belong there. Jobs are disappearing. Even among our own ranks of development professionals, we don’t always come together and when we do, those rooms aren’t always diverse in thought and body. Plus, there’s the idea that unless you are plopping money down or employed by a government or nonprofit entity that helps the neighborhood, you don’t matter when it comes to what you think about the neighborhoods and your metro (or rural) region.

I will admit that I don’t write as much as I could or speak as much as I could about these things. I’ll also admit that I don’t like my car and I need better sidewalks and bike lanes and heck, places to go in a 5 minute radius so I don’t feel compelled to jump in my car to go everywhere. I am starting to do my part in the resources/affordability/community-making exchange, though. I’m learning how to cook more and save money. I walk to work many days. I walk to the stores and restaurants we do have in our community. When I travel, I use transit, other people’s bikeshares and I walk there as well.

Yet, when I started this page, I did it to not become the absolute authority on urbanism. I did it not to slam rural life or actual small cities and towns that aren’t just appendages created on bigger cities to make people feel  better about themselves by choosing their perfect neighbors and schools and allowing them room to flaunt their relative wealth, admittedly in the early days courtesy of government grants and provisions. (I know that was a long one, let me breathe for a second).

I did this so I could make sense of the things I observe on a daily basis. I did this as my way of helping people, to extend out my life calling of making communities stronger and better.

I don’t have all the answers. I don’t have all the right answers. I certainly don’t have all the “token _________” answers and ONLY those answers. I have so many more questions.

In that spirit of five years of writing, speaking and talking to people about these ideas casually and formally, plus the fact that this is what you do on milestone anniversaries, I’m going to spend the next few weeks drilling down on my philosophies on various areas of development and life of which I think we need to pay attention.

Many of you have been reading for years. Others of you are new to the site. I, as this is my life’s work, and as I’ve gone through various transitions and examinations of who I am as a person, want to clarify how I practice community and economic development.

I also want to talk to you more, in different channels. On Tuesdays, you’ll get what I call the classic TBU experience. I drop a post or email and I share that information throughout the day (and you share it too!) On Wednesdays, I’ll be coming to you in an audio format, at the very least live on Periscope or Google Hangout or both and in a few weeks, recorded or live podcasts with various other planning and development leaders.

There will be breaks for holidays. There will be a season, like I’m producing a media program (which this is) and hopefully, you’ll be inviting me out or I’ll be attending the various conferences and gatherings that go on throughout the year.

Oh and my first book is still for sale and I’m working on a second! Details forthcoming about what that’s about and how to get it. I can sincerely promise that it will be easier to get you hands on book 2. But for now, here’s book 1.

I’m so excited to get back to blogging and writing, which is the core of my planning and development practice. I’m looking forward to talking to all of you and enjoy your Friday!

(Also for those of you who have sent guest posts in the past, I’m not doing any right now and I apologize for not making that clearer on my blog or in any correspondence).

And finally, if you don’t get my emails, make sure you do so right here.