Category Archives: Guest Post

Academic Research, Guest Post

GUEST POST: Energy Justice: A Comparative Case Study of Decentralized Energy Planning Models in Rural Ayiti [Haiti]

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The following report, written by Sophonie Milande Joseph, was originally published in the American Planning Association International Division’s September 2019 Newsletter Interplan. Read and learn more about Sophonie at the end. Interested in sharing your academic papers, conference proceedings and articles from other industry newsletters, let us know.

The purpose of this study is to determine how different institutional arrangements affect energy justice and sovereignty in Ayiti [Haiti]. Several organizations are currently providing electricity to Haitian citizens; representing different organizational, technical, and geographic approaches to delivering energy services. I hypothesize that different institutional arrangements lead to differences in distributive, procedural, and recognition of energy services — these key theoretical concepts in the emerging energy justice literature highlight three ways that inequality may occur during energy service provision (Jenkins et al., 2016). To evaluate this hypothesis, I collected data that describes the organizational properties of each institution through a semi-structured interview protocol administered to energy provider representatives.

COUNTRY BACKGROUND

Ayiti is located in the Caribbean region, sharing the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. In Ayiti’s republican governance system, the people and the state’s social contract endows state powers at the national level. Thus, the central state must explicitly decree powers to subnational government units to undertake civic duties — for example, the provision of electric service delivery to local consumers.

The World Bank estimates a human population size of 10,981,229 people in 2017 (WB, 2018). In Figure 1, note the population distribution is within the capital and primate city: Pòtoprens (Port-au-Prince) and its metropolitan region (Bodson, Benoît, Duval, & Thérasmé, 2017; Manigat, 1997). Urban primacy is where population and economic activity within a given country are dominated by one or a few of the largest cities.

THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS

Ayiti’s fractured decentralization planning results from thepolitical needs of national and subnational leaders, rather than reflecting a broader concern with the public good (Cantave, Fils-Aimé, & Brutus, 2000; Charles, 2018; Joseph, Klopp, Schumacher-Kocik, & Marcello, 2011Njoh, 2016 #64). Ayiti’s non-urbanized areas are in varying states of fragmented, administrative deconcentration from the national state’s influence centralized in the urban primate, Pòtoprens (Joseph, 2019). Legislative loopholes, or gray spaces, are strategic tools that facilitate ongoing corruption and co-opting of systems that delay implementation of decentralization (Yiftachel 2009).

Simultaneously, Haitian planning law also provides legal justification for the parallel pursuit of improved economic livelihoods, in this case through electrification, and social justice (law of April 5, 2017). Energy justice metrics provide explicit measures for assessing just processes and equitable outcomes that parallel global trends in the creation and use of value-based, planning metrics (S. S. Fainstein,2010; Griffin, Cohen, & Maddox, 2015; Heffron, 2015). Distributive, procedural, and recognition comprise key justice sub-types in the emerging energy justice literature stream. The justice indicators monitor the energy planning cycle and outcomes (Griffin et al., 2015). I use these three, energy justice building blocks, to frame the analysis of data findings.

Distributive justice (DJ) supports tracking social and spatial distribution of positive and negative externalities upon electricity consumers by operationalizing equity of outcomes [Appendix B: 8-12]. DJ’s policy implications prioritize inclusionary, electricity distribution mechanisms.

Procedural justice (PJ) centers citizens’ rights for meaningful, public participation in decision-making processes that affect their built environment’s outcomes (Arnstein, 1969; Choguill, 1996). Moving beyond tokenized participation, PJ operationalizes energy service providers’ institutional structure using three measures: organizational, technical and geographic characteristics [Appendix B: 1-7](Heffron, 2017; Jenkins et al., 2016).

Recognition justice (RJ) centers the struggle for redistributive justice by acknowledging inequalities originating in the slavery era’s transnational mercantilism and its influence on population settlement patterns (Allen, 2017; Yarrington, 2015). Such spatial-historic analysis of infrastructure investments connects contemporary patterns in siting of energy infrastructure investment to extractive,institutional practices.

RESULTS

How are different institutional arrangements affecting energy justice in rural Ayiti?

• Electricity Provision by EarthSpark, CEAC, andEDH Organization and Public Participation

Each of the institutions reviewed had varied organizational structures and different methods for public engagement. The EarthSpark microgrid is owned privately with the aim to operate a for-profit business. The EarthSpark team is knowledgeable and comprised of experienced employees working to develop and maintain the microgrid (Interview X). They have a memorandum of understanding with the local komin. There are three levels of engagement with the community: an energy committee, community meetings and grid ambassadors. The energy committee is composed of selected members of the community. The purpose of the committee is to discuss any pressing items relating to the microgrid system. The greater community meeting is open to all members of the community. Inevitably, the voices in the energy committee and greater community meeting do not always align. Lastly, the grid ambassadors are the face of EarthSpark in their respective areas. They typically work at a store in town and act as the point of communicationbetween individual customers and the microgrid.

The CEAC cooperative is designed to include the community in the development and operation of the microgrid. The responsibility for such communication lies with the board, which consists of three members of the community who each serve three-year terms (Interview). The board members are paid only a token remuneration and are responsible for overseeing all aspects of the microgrid development and operations. Due to the technical and economic difficulties of the microgrid development, official communication channels were not a priority and thus never developed. There are, however, periodic informal exchanges through places of public gathering, such as schools and churches. For practical needs, if a customer needs to report a failure, they can contact a representative located in each commune or call the commercial director or general manager. Due to the small number of clients, the interviewee states this direct mode of interaction is feasible; however, there would be more difficulty with higher client numbers.

EDH does not have explicitly delineated policies for including the community in the planning of new energy-related, infrastructure (Interview). Communications appear to primarily be top-down using mediums such as newspapers, televisions, and radio. Customers can call to report failure or outages, but they are not guaranteed a response (Interview).

Business Models for Sustained Operation

Common to all the institutions is the inability to recover costs, as none have yet to settle on a sustainable business model.

EDH has well documented financial issues. The government pays two-thirds of the system’s running costs with payments for service only covering a small fraction of costs. It is estimated, however, that if revenue were able to be recovered that the system could run at a profit (Belt,Allien, Mackinnon, & Kashi, 2017). While technically introducing metering technology is possible, recent attempts to do so have failed due to what has been termed as a lack of will from the organizations in power.

In contrast, EarthSpark was initially funded through external grant funding with the intent to develop a sustainable business model through public and private partnerships. EarthSpark has made several strides in attempting to develop a model of electricity provision that can be profitable. They have developed a methodology to evaluate and rank various communities throughout rural Haiti to assess their suitability, based on several metrics including population density and ability to pay (Archambault, 2014; Interview). They have also developed new low-cost metering technologies, incorporated pay-as-you-go payment methods, and developed ties with the community to mitigate theft all in attempts to bring costs down (Archambault, 2014;Interview). They have significantly oversized their system enabling them to have a controlled ramp up to more customers while maintaining the same level of service. However, they are still yet to recover costs. To rebuild after Hurricane Matthew, EarthSpark was required to return to investors for subsequent funding (Stuebi & Hatch, 2018).

The CEAC cooperative was built with initial funding from the Norwegian government, USAID, and other nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) and with volunteer contributions in-kind from the National Rural Electrical Cooperative Association (Stuebi et al. 2018; Interview). The initial business model aimed at the microgrid to be self-sufficient in 4 years. However, several aspects hindered this progress. The business model assumed a rate of demand increase higher than what occurred, the cost to obtain diesel increased substantially from initial projections, and Hurricane Matthew destroyed the microgrid requiring additional financing and slowing the growth of the system. Currently the price of electricity is subsidized to a value of 25 c/kwh but according to the interviewee may need to increase to the full cost of 45 c/kwh (Interview). This would be a substantial increase for their customers and could render the whole project infeasible.

EdH Office Building in Cabaret Hall

How do you balance the business need for economies of scale and the need for organizations equipped to meet the communications needs of the community? The black and white approach is a set up for failure. A holistic approach acknowledges that without social stability, economic development is not sustainable.

• Implications for Energy Justice

Procedural Justice

Procedural justice seeks to determine how decision-makers have sought to meaningfully engage with the community and power relations. Arnstein (1969) outlined eight levels of public participation: manipulation, therapy, informing, consultation, placation, partnership, delegated power and citizen control.

EarthSpark exhibits a level of public participation that is categorized as placation. This level is defined by engaging the community in dialogue through surveys, neighborhood meetings and public hearings. While the community is consulted and able to provide advice, EarthSpark retains final decision-making power.

CEAC is a cooperative. There is a layer of technical experts that mediate communications between the CEAC citizen representatives and external funding bodies (Interview). I categorize CEAC as also being a case of the placation form of public participation.

I have not been able to identify EDH’s systematic process for continuous public participation. There has been project by-project inclusion of community members through informational campaigns in the past (Interview X). Respondents noted such public engagement activities will occur again in the future. As such, I categorize EDH as being in the non-participation levels of Arnstein’s ladder of public participation.

The differences in the level of citizen participation directly translate into meeting the electrification for economic development needs of people through socially just planning processes and outcomes (S. Fainstein, 2011). July 2018’s events mark the start of an energy justice story that demonstrates how corruption related to the Petrocaraibe funds’ embezzlement and the lack of transparency in fuel price decision-making negatively impact recent strides in the country’s branding as a place of socio-economic stability that is open for business to investors and tourists alike (Seraphin, 2016). Instead, the lack of inclusion of social justice issues in previous energy-related decision-making launched the ongoing “Ayiti Nou Vle A / The Ayiti We Want,” social media-led uprising against corruption within Ayiti’s state and international aid sectors. Sustainable development requires simultaneous pursuit of equity, economic and environmental goals (Campbell, 1996); otherwise, electrification for economic development will not be sufficient to spark Ayiti’s viable inclusion in a globalized economy (Goldsmith, 1997).

Distributive Justice

Distributive justice seeks to highlight the equity of differences in benefits and negative effects. With respect to the benefits afforded by electricity service, there is a clear division in the allocation of energy services to the rural customers served by EarthSpark and CEAC’s micro-grids and the urban customers served by EDH. The microgrid systems through their targeted approach were each able to provide a high level of service relative to EDH and incorporate various levels of public participation. Using urban and rural as collective classes to compare differences in service outcomes, demonstrates urban citizens have access to more electricity provision, albeit sparse and intermittent, than their rural counterparts. EarthSpark will only expand a microgrid system to komins that show the possibility for favorable returns. For the cooperative model, komins could petition to develop a cooperative microgrid but are still beholden to outside funding organizations to obtain capital and technical know-how. Overall, densely populated areas are viewed as a priority for electrification by EDH while EarthSpark targets specific urbanized areas of rural regions due to the minimum densities required for micro-grids to be financially solvent within privatized funding models.

Recognition Justice

Recognition attempts to determine which communities are mis-represented and ignored by energy service providers by asking survey questions to understand the make-up of each energy provider’s customer base, the participatory committees and governance bodies. Due to the fuel riots, which canceled the household survey, the study was not able to obtain household-level data about the communities served by each energy service provider.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

The purpose of this study is to determine how different institutional arrangements affect energy justice and sovereignty in Ayiti. The findings indicate privatization of formerly state-goods, dependency on international aid and short-term, political maneuvers have undercut implementation of decentralization planning. As a result, the three models for energy provision are also affected by international aid limitations, privatization’s demands for fiscal solvency, de-concentration of energy infrastructure beyond urbanized areas and delayed devolution of state powers to the local level.

There are positives and negatives in my findings on thelaunch and implementation of the two decentralized IPPs in the Southern Haiti region. CEAC and EarthSpark are providing partially clean-energy in sites that previously did not have access to or reliable access to energy. Furthermore, CEAC and EarthSpark are experimental models that are creating experiential knowledge that may inform future energy infrastructure expansion in other communities.

The negatives regarding the two decentralized IPPs in the Southern Haiti region that also provide lessons learned for planning professionals working to expand utility infrastructure within marginalized communities. Given the push for privatized utilities, business models for sustained operation demand changes in business and technical plans. There is a need for business plans that explicitly incorporate known uncertainties due to damage from natural disasters. For example, the CEAC business plan’s forecasts did not incorporate financial needs in case of a natural disaster such as Hurricane Matthew in October 2016. Technical plans need to include modular build up to be able to operate underchanging conditions.

The organization’s size has positive and negative impacts on energy justice outcomes for individual consumers. The struggle may appear to be binary: how do you balance the business need for economies of scale and the need for organizations equipped to meet the communications needs of the community? The black and white approach is a set up for failure. A holistic approach acknowledges that without social stability, economic development is not sustainable.

The planning and policy implications of decentralization planning displayed in Ayiti’s trends in unbundling of utility services. Ongoing monitoring of energy justice indicators across different institutional arrangements provides lessons learned for practitioners and policymakers regarding best practices for improving access to electricity. In this manner, Haitian citizens may be spared the injustice of an international aid and governing system that seeks to indirectly inform affected citizen stakeholders regarding pertinent energy policy decisions via a football game.

 Sophonie Milande Joseph is a Ph.D. Candidate in Urban Planning at Columbia University’s Graduate School
of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) in New York City. Her current research agenda centers
environmental justice, transnational planning and intersectional feminism. Her doctoral research is focused on
the diffusion of traveling planning ideas in Haiti with an intersectional feminism lens. You can find her on social media @sofonimjozef.
Family and Place, Guest Post, Pittsburgh, Politics of Place, Retail, Uncategorized, What is urban planning?

GUEST POST–Rethinking Community Development Efforts: Creating Incentive to Stay or Building Reason to Flee?

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When Allison Guess reached out to me about guest posting, I noticed she was from Pittsburgh and I asked her to tell me about what’s really going on in East Liberty, an area lauded for its new development lifeblood. However, as I expected and even more, she has taken us back to the roots of gentrification (colonialization) and illustrated how the current changes are right in line with previous patterns. Her post raises questions and intensifies my hope that one day, we as Americans can come to terms with land ownership, cultivation, and value in an ethical and honorable manner.

A few years ago, I began doing some preliminary research on land based historical trauma. I was specifically interested in land theft and the effects gentrification on Black communities. In a 21st century effort to expand my bibliography, I did a basic Google search of “land theft.” Although not specific enough, my search request did birth a critical evaluation of the stories of land theft that our country has told.

As grade school children, we as United States citizens learn about how the Pilgrims came to the “New World” on the Mayflower and later had a blissful Thanksgiving meal with the Natives. Educators are not honest when describing this situation of overt land theft, the rapping of communities and extreme injustice those Native American communities experienced and continue to face. History books ignore the past and presently lingering notion of Manifest Destiny that lead to the colonization of the African continent (before and after the Pilgrims came to the “New World”) and the seizure of off-continental U.S. territories. Only as adults and when entering college do a few of us hear or care to learn of this bitter truth.

Ironically, past and present conversations about land theft, more often than none seem to tell a drastically biased tale. In the post-slavery Jim Crow Era, one can clearly evaluate the thoughts and fears of urbanization that took place during in Industrial Revolution. Many whites during the time made their concern of the African American Great Migration, also described as the “Negro invasion” known in large public spheres. In that era it was Blacks that were being accused of taking all the jobs and displacing white Americans, sound familiar? On the other hand, major history sources fail to mention that Blacks participating in this massive move, were responding to the terrorism of the south by fleeing for their lives in hopes of salvaging their communities and living out the promised American Dream.

To speak to today’s biased tale of land theft, we can simply encounter present day conversations about immigration and “Mexicans” “stealing” land, resources and jobs from “Americans.” Paradoxically, most of the inhabited lands that some U.S. citizens see as the biggest “threat” of immigrant occupancy (southern and southwestern states such as Texas, Arizona, California, Alabama etc.) are the lands that were not only once occupied by Native Americans but more resounding the country of Mexico, alike. It is interesting to me that advocates of border control and harsh immigration policies, continue to seek ways to police and keep out the descendants of the original inhabitants of these lands.

My point in creating this past and present parallel is to highlight the deeply imbedded fears, bias, and racism in the white psyche. Understanding (not judging) these feelings while having an open and honest “immigration” conversation can help many of us to understand the “memories” that Black Americans have of land theft and land based historical trauma. They can help community organizers, community planners, and investors understand that all people, regardless of skin color, develop relationships, memories, and some level of fondness to their communities regardless of how blighted these spaces may be or have become. We should be reminded that a simple change in community design that ultimately leads to the attraction of a different demographic group other than the already present residents is in and of itself a model of invasion as well as a type of land theft.

Courtesy Allison Guess
East Liberty redevelopments. Courtesy Allison Guess.

An example of not taking the above into consideration and the possible damaging ramifications of community development includes that of East Liberty. East Liberty was once a predominately African American occupied neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As a child, I grew up just minutes away from East Liberty. Like many urban Black neighborhoods in the U.S., there was certainly violence, drugs and crime; I will not negate that. However, there was also a strong community that sought to overcome the effects of systematic poverty and disenfranchisement and thus give back to the community.

East Liberty seemed to change overnight. I went away to college and then returned to a new neighborhood. There were fancy restaurants, Target, $400,000+ homes being built and parking meters lined major streets. Soon these streets would become a nightlife and fine dinning Mecca. Commercial for sale signs were everywhere and one could see the future plans of those particular spaces in their windows and on their lots. A majority Black middle school ended this past school year early so it could be demolished and turned into costly lofts.

One of the more sincere objectives of investors is to create incentive for those dwelling in certain areas coined slums to stay. Adversely, in East Liberty (and some other gentrified neighborhoods in United States) the incentive that was created was one that encouraged former residents to leave. Although beneficial to get the “blight” out of neighborhoods, it is very clear that the “original” residents of East Liberty had no or a very small voice in the changes. The documentary East of Liberty highlights this struggle between original residents, new residents, and developers.

Now I know many on the defense will say that supportive, mixed-income housing was built. One could argue that this was established with the community impute. However, I believe this housing is a monument of negativity: a symbol of the undermining of a people due to an enduring history of racism, disenfranchisement, and historical trauma. While support is needed for the abused and addicted, the best support comes from true policy change, the critique and modification of systems, and the desire to see competitive groups excel and take pride in recreating their own community. This support does not include takeover, theft, capture, poverty, forced socialization, or community defeat.

Thus in in moving forward, I have some normative suggestions to community planners and investors. We should seek to make sure all residents are included when making decisions about neighborhood change and development. We ought to be critical of who is or who is not at the conversation table. This means we do not just include the more vocal or affluent voices in the community that are still deemed different in some ways to us, but we should also seek representation of those community members who barely have a whisper. It is not anybody’s responsibility to make decisions or decide the fates of others. When creating incentive to stay, we should make sure it is just that. The primary intention in development should always be to have people stay and the secondary focus should be to attract others into the community and thus naturally foster a more diverse community over time. In doing all of this, the memories and experiences of land theft, invasion, and immigration should inform our discussion as all racial and regional groups have experienced their own story of settling and seizure from an “outsider” group.

Allison Guess is a resident of Pittsburgh, PA. Allison graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with two Bachelors degrees in Political Science and Hispanic Languages and Literature (Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese). Currently, Allison is a consultant and the Academic Liaison for the Black/Land Project. Allison is interested in land based historical trauma, gentrification, redlining, gerrymandering, policy histories, displacement, ethnography and storytelling, just to name a few. Allison hopes to pursue a PhD in African American/Africana Studies in order to further research Black peoples’ relationships to land and place.

Cities, Guest Post, Politics of Place

Guest Post: Yes, A City Can and Should Have It All.

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I recently had one of those old-fashioned, in-person-type conversations with Kristen.  We discussed the [Greensboro] performing arts center plans, and how she believes supporters should bill the project as the Greensboro Civic Auditorium rather than Performing Arts Center.  She’s right about this. Performing Arts Center means very little to most people and at worst gives off a snobbish tone.  It gives off an old-fashioned aura, of a place of bad middle school field trips.  Civic Auditorium, on the other hand, gives off the air of the Forum, the great public gathering place.  One of our neighbors to the north, Roanoke, VA, pulled this off with the Roanoke Civic Center.  With this in mind, we should examine the downtown events that will benefit from having a great downtown civic auditorium.

First, we have very well attended, arts-and-culture-focused festivals. Over 90,000 people come downtown for Fun Fourth, our Independence Day festival. The Fun Fourth events fill downtown with people and activity.  Adding to that with talks, music, and movies in our Civic Auditorium, and with concurrent events in pre-existing downtown spaces will help us keep up the momentum of an already successful event. Next, our United Arts Council is the second year of its new 17 Days festival. In its first year, the festival drew big name acts like the Avett Brothers and filled the city with visitors.  Additionally, our First Fridays and the[December] Festival of Lights keep getting bigger and bigger.  We can use another great downtown venue to grow these events.

This model of growth, building on arts, tourism, and fun, worked for our neighbor Charleston. Charleston, which has lots of visitors and event spaces, is conducting a $142 million renovation of the Gaillard Auditorium, one of the main spaces of its world-famous Spoleto Festival.  Charleston wants to keep up with modern sound systems and theater technology. Many other events can use the space, and new ones can always spring up.  Charleston has created many new festivals and gatherings in the last 40 years: Spoleto, Charleston Food and Wine Festival, the Lowcountry Oyster Festival, the Family Circle Tennis Tournament, and others.  These keep the city full of tourists and businesspeople who come, spend money, and leave. Greensboro should draw some lessons from our neighbor to the south.

A few months back, Kristen wrote a piece about the civic inferiority complex.  That no matter what, we need another status symbol company – an Apple Store, a Nordstrom’s, a Trader Joe’s, or a Whole Foods – to make us a “real town.”

The performing arts center debate shows the same sort of complex, as though we are not classy enough for an arts venue.  We hear “Greensboro is not an arts town, it’s a family town” (as though you cannot be both) or “we are more of a sports town” or “we’re not the kind of people who would use that.”   Those who believe this about our town misjudge our citizens – Greensboro has filled venues for arts events over and over again.

Instead of waiting on others (like Nordstrom’s or Apple) to come build these things, we should demonstrate our status through our own achievements as a city.  Strive forward with an aspirational building, with the knowledge that Greensboro can grow into its new clothes.  New South Wales did not wait for a company to build the Sydney Opera House, the province did it itself.  I am sure some people at the time said that Sydney was not ready for such a venue, that Sydney was not an Opera Kind of Town.  UNESCO named the building a World Heritage Site in 2007.  That, my friends, shows the power of vision and ambition.  Charleston was once not the Charleston that we know today.  Civic leaders, including Mayor Joseph P. Riley, in his 40th year of service as mayor, pushed for development and arts to create today’s Charleston.

In addition to building the new, we should take care of the old.  In Providence, Rhode Island, Mayor Angel Taveras campaigned in 2010 on a fix-up-the city platform.  True to his word, this year he put a $40 million bond issue on the ballot for Providence road repair.  Given the terrible shape of Providence’s streets, the fact that Rhode Island has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation, and the huge popularity of Mayor Taveras, the voters gave the Mayor’s bond 90% of the vote.  Greensboro should look at this as a model.  Having a great city means not only building new venues and amenities, but caring for the ones we have as well.

Previous councils chopping maintenance budgets and the failure of some bond referenda in the past (including ones to fix up War Memorial Auditorium) have left the Gate City with a backlog of deferred maintenance.  The Cultural Arts Center, the Grimsley High School pool, many of our community centers, War Memorial Stadium, and even the Melvin [Municipal] Office Building could use some work.  Perhaps a major maintenance bond could get through the city council or a bond referendum.

Mayor Taveras showed every neighborhood in Providence how the bond would improve their streets, campaigning throughout the town with a map of every single street in Providence with streets selected for maintenance highlighted, should the bond pass.  This worked, and 90% of voters pulled the lever for Taveras’ initiative. Greensboro could use a Taveras-style push for repairs, as an economic development initiative and because we should care and maintain our shared property.

However, this should not be an either-or choice, as in either the PAC or maintain everything else.  We need to bring the whole city into the 21st century.  Perhaps while we are at it we can get Duke Energy to bury some more power lines, rather than hacking at our trees.

We need a ten-year plan that includes building the PAC and providing upkeep to all municipal buildings in need.  This could come from one bond, or a series of them.  It could all come from the budget in other ways, though I doubt that would happen.  All the amenities, public spaces, and people make Greensboro what it is, the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts.  We should not let the spaces we have languish, nor should we ever stop improving or innovating.

Images above all belong to me, clockwise from top: DC Metro in Alexandria, VA, July 2012; Performing Arts Center Charrette in Greensboro,NC, October 2012;Brunch at Yolk in Chicago, November 2012; Airpoet Sign at Busboys and Poets, Arlington,VA, December 2012 and Carolina Theater, Greensboro, NC, July, 2012.

Cities, Family and Place, Greensboro, Guest Post, Politics of Place

Guest Post-An Open Letter on the State of Greensboro

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In honor of Election Day in the United States, I wanted to post this reflection of the political climate of Greensboro, where I live and work and inspired to be a placeist most of all. It’s written by my friend Graham Sheridan, a 23 year old Greensboro native and a graduate of Grimsley High School and Washington and Lee University. He is currently a Master’s student at Brown University in Providence, RI, in public administration. We met last year on the campaign trail for city council. My candidate lost, his won. We both love Greensboro with all of our hearts, so campaigning and making sure good people got on city council, was personal. Also, as Millennials, we have a very different view of some of the old struggles of our hometown. Without further ado, I’m giving you Graham’s letter, which outlines this different view:

An Open Letter on the State of Greensboro

This is the sort of piece editors usually write on the eve of an election – a sort of “the choice before us is clear” piece. But the choice is not clear, or, more aptly; I am not sure what the choices are. Instead, I intend to look at how Greensboro is doing today, examine what trends push our town, and see not who, but what ideas, can put our city on the best course for the next ten years.

When I was campaigning for Councilwoman Hoffmann, people would balk a little at how much money and effort went into her election. I would always answer that Greensboro, especially Mrs. Hoffmann’s district, has graduated from being a Big Town to being a Small City. We ran a Small City campaign in order to win. In Charleston, SC for example, city council and county commission candidates spend big money on staffs and field offices. In 2009, Mayor Johnson learned the hard way that Greensboro has grown to be a small city. She is a politician of the Big Town era, and a lot of the people who voted against her were newcomers and neighborhoods that were annexed into the city, people who did not grow up in Big Town era Greensboro. Nonetheless, almost everyone on City Council today is a holdover of the Big Town era or still clings to the Big Town power structure for support. The old structure proves hard to shake off.

The Big Town model was based on four quadrants – professional class white people, working class white people, professional class black people, and working class black people. These quadrants dominated economic and social life in Greensboro for many years. The professionals had white-collar jobs at the mill or at Jefferson Pilot, or were lawyers, doctors, shop owners and the like. Working class people worked on the floor in the mill or in the rail yard or some such. These divisions were easily seen and completely understood. On occasion there were a couple of exceptions made, for example, some Jewish people were worked into the system. Now, things are a much more mixed up in Greensboro. We live in a multi-ethnic, multilingual city. Jobs are spread around more companies. Unlike previous eras, we lack a monolithic all-controlling employer who can dictate and bankroll what happens in town. For example, when people in Greensboro wanted to start a golf tournament, the Bryan family just wrote a check. Notice how many places and institutions in Greensboro are named for the same few people, people who dominated their quadrants. These quadrants no longer describe our population, and Greensboro’s economy no longer centers on one or two huge employers.

I wonder if even what we have left of the Big Town power structure would still be in place if so many of Greensboro’s new citizens were not immigrants without voting ability. When I go to the Super G International grocery I wonder how different city council would look if even 15% of those residents voted in municipal elections.
Most of the Super G’s customers, however, are left out of the Big Town power structure, because they do not fit any of the quadrants.

A few factions dictate the opinions and votes of the people within the Big Town power structure. The Country Club and the African-American Church get notoriety as the two most noted and visible. These still dominate the conversation in Greensboro, and tend to get their people elected. However, these organizations are starting to show cracks. Especially in the 2009 election, when the Tea Party, organized locally as Conservatives for Guilford County (C4GC), was able to get several of its people in office. Or in 2011, when some of the African-American groups tried to unseat Councilman Jim Kee, who still won handily.

De Tocqueville worried in the mid-1800s that democracy would fall to the tyranny of the majority, that the rights of smaller groups of citizens would not be protected. In Greensboro we do see this in votes like Amendment One[our ballot initiative to amend the constitution to define marriage in North Carolina]. But what we really live in is a tyranny of the participators. Some people have outsized influence because they participate and pay attention and lobby. Others, who may have real concerns, because they fail to participate, never get heard. Some companies and groups that that employ a lot of people do not participate very much in local politics. This does not fit the definition of tyranny per se, because anyone can enter and start participating at any moment, but the political circles take effort and time to break into.

This self-selection creates some of the conundrums of connecting with voters for Mrs. Hoffmann, especially our experiment with public office hours, when we post a place and time on her Facebook for the public to come speak to her and voice their concerns. Most of the people who have something to tell city council can just pick up the phone and call Ms. Hoffmann whenever they want. She knows what they think, because they show up and tell her. So they have no need to come to the public office hours. Other people, who do not pay attention, would not know to look for Councilwoman Hoffmann’s office hours, and probably do not know their councilperson’s name. Thus, we have a huge self-selection problem. So very few people show up to have coffee with Councilwoman Hoffmann. The people who self-select to care about politics, and by extension to run for office, are not necessarily the best people to do the jobs, or lobby city council. But what should those public officials really be doing? What actions could they take to bring serious positive progress to Greensboro? Or is Greensboro okay?

To me, most of our civic issues come back to the same core: the dissolution of Greensboro’s Big Town Institutions, and debate surrounding what Small City institutions our citizens and businesspeople should create to take their place. The Big Town institutions and Big Town civil society were demolished by a one-two punch: the closure of the Big Town economic drivers, and integration.

In Richard Russo’s Empire Falls everyone in the small town of Empire Falls, Maine waits in vain for the old textile mill to open back up. It was the center of the town, and with its passing went the beating heart of livelihood in the little town. You can see that desperation in the News & Record sometimes. People imagine that some company (Dell, Citi, HondaJet) is going to come to town and employ 4,000 people. This, of course, is not going to happen. But people are upset, because the old institutions – the mills: and Jefferson Pilot – no longer exist at the scale they once did. Lorillard still makes cigarettes in Greensboro, but a few engineers run an automated factory, not thousands of people hand-rolling cigarettes.

The Performing Arts Center debate, too, has Big Town/Small City groups at odds. Some of the more progressive voices in town, and many of the Small City young people, see this as a straightforward choice between progress and stagnation. A lot of the Big Town politicians see it as West Greensboro spending money on their pet projects rather than on East Greensboro. Those Big Town politicians, however, ignore what really happened to East Greensboro.

The second blow of the one-two punch knocking out the Big Town institutions, integration, has changed much of Greensboro’s landscape. You can tell this especially in our debates about grocery stores in East Greensboro. The ones that used to be there packed up and left because some of the old, beautiful, neighborhoods around A&T that used to be Black Gentry neighborhoods have been abandoned. What were once mixed-income areas are no longer. Wealthy black families moved west or to black gentry suburbs along Alamance Church Road. Jonathan Franzen recently wrote in the New Yorker about “the obliteration of all social distinctions by money.” Many members of the Big Town power structure have a hard time accepting this. We celebrate every citizen’s ability to choose where she wants to live and go to school without fear of discrimination. Still, now that these changes have come, we must examine how to protect and reinvigorate neighborhoods left behind by social change. The old quadrants (professional white people, professional black people, working white people, and working black people) no longer apply geographically as they once did. Those raw economics, rather than public projects such as the Aquatic Center, are to blame for many of the problems in East Greensboro.

Integration has also taken a toll on two of the major institutions of East Greensboro – NC A&T State University and Bennett College. Just as wealthy African-Americans have been integrated into white neighborhoods, high-achieving black students have been integrated into white schools. We have our first black president and he went not to Morehouse and Howard Law but to Columbia and Harvard Law. The collapse of the black gentry neighborhoods and the openness of UNCG have made Bennett an ever-less appealing place to go to school. A&T has the advantage of being a state school, but I worry about its place in culture and its status among employers. NC State has the advantage in recruiting and placing the best black engineers now. We may be seeing the last generation of black leaders who were educated at HBCUs. In the face of this distress, A&T is expanding. It does still admirably serve well its function of training African-Americans in the sciences. Maybe the leadership hopes that being North Carolina’s backup engineering school will prove a worthwhile niche. Equality and choice are exactly what Jessie Jackson fought for, but it takes a toll on his alma mater NC A&T SU.

Technology, globalization, and integration have blown open the old Big Town economy and Big Town power structure. Many of the institutions that brought Greensboro through the 20th century are no more. Our town needs new ideas, entrepreneurs, and energy to be a part of the 21st century economy. Additionally, the new citizens of all types contribute to Greensboro’s energy and excitement.

We have great opportunities that come from the cracks in the Big Town power structure. Activists can get more done, because they can cross quadrants and build alliances based on common interests. They do not have to worry about angering the man who employs 15% of the town. The mill town and company town Small business owners have more of a say, and, for example, when M’Coul’s Public House worries about how noise ordinances will affect the St. Patrick’s Day party, powerful people listen.

However, the trade-off of the erosion of the Big Town structure is that civic life is ever more important. In the Performing Arts Center debate, we hear people scream, over and over, “find private funding!” These people hearken back to the Big Town days, imagining that a Joseph M. Bryan will come along and throw in $10 million and a Performing Arts Center will happen. Those days are over. Greensboro’s society grows more meritocratic and more based on activism, mutual respect, and a cosmopolitan mix of people of all sorts. Instead of living under a rich benefactor, we must come together and make public decisions of what to do with communal money. The democratic process takes longer, just ask the members of the council-appointed Performing Arts Center Task Force (full disclosure: the author’s mother is on the task force) but the process is necessary for decisions concerning large amounts of public money.

The Performing Arts Center debate, really, just illustrates the new normal in decision-making for Greensboro. Good old-fashioned community organizing will be the rule from now on to affect change in the town. It worked for the opponents of the White Street Landfill being re-opened. The Big Town people on City Council, who thought they could pit one quadrant against the others failed to see the new Small City mentality. Groups, especially the Concerned Citizens of Northeast Greensboro, were adept at crossing quadrants, and getting people who lived far from White Street interested and activist on their neighborhood’s behalf.

To sum up, we no longer live in the Greensboro of the 60s. We see that everywhere; from how many people line up to live in CityView to political organization of night club owners. The Big Town structure endures, but in a weakened state. The power has spread to more people. The question now comes: what do the people want to do with the power? What kind of town do they want to live in? We must ask them.

Guest Post, Issues and Ideas, Staunton

GUEST POST: Does Rural Urbanism = “White”?

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Today I am sharing my space with Katie McCaskey of Urban Escapee. She and I are examining different shades of the words “rural urbanism”. Below she examines the racial element and on her blog I explore the place-related element. Enjoy!

Our rural urbanism captured my attention when I moved from New York City to Staunton, Virginia (pop. 22,000) and started an independent business.

Paradoxically, it was “rural” Staunton’s urbanism which attracted me back to it. The “Main Street” downtown is intentionally dedicated to independent businesses, and, the walkable infrastructure, free city trolley, and Amtrak access are all appealing lifestyle amenities. In fact, the infrastructure itself influenced the decision to start a neighborhood grocery; there had been such a thing at the turn of the last century and coming from New York my husband and I were spoiled by the walkable convenience of neighborhood shops. That resulted in George Bowers Grocery, which expanded last year to include a cafe/beer garden.

I’m very excited about what these pockets of “rural urbanism” can offer for our futures. In fact, I got so excited I wrote the “Micropolitan Manifesto” about the opportunities and possibilities present, especially when you factor in building your own business. But, one thing worries me:

Is it just for white people?

Of course, I don’t think so, But, I’m white, and, admittedly it didn’t cross my mind until a black friend from New York pointed out that the title of my blog and upcoming book (“Urban Escapee”) sounded like, well, “white flight”. The unspoken assumption: “By ‘urban’, don’t you mean ‘black’? And, aren’t small towns, especially small towns in the South, filled mostly with white people?” Who would build a business there?

Uh, no.

I was talking about “escaping” the constraints of big city living and, later, escaping from the notions of what is/isn’t possible in our country’s smallest urban pockets. Yet, it continued. Another reader ranted about the use of the word “pilgrim” in a quote used to describe adventurous entrepreneurship in our micropolitans.

So what’s the real problem?

I see two big issues that contribute to social misconceptions about our smallest urban centers, aka, micropolitans:

1) Diversity. Diversity has always been a part of “small town America”, but, its an identity only recently openly and honestly explored… one example is the identity series of Appalachia at TheHillville.com. Mass media culture has meant mass storytelling about our diverse geography and a bland retelling of who lives where. Only now is a wider range of experience and perspective being shared and discussed.

Moreover, at the same time our country as a whole is becoming more diversified—and this is a trend is present in micropolitans, too. See the book: “Small, Gritty, Green: The Promise of America’s Smaller Industrial Cities in a Low-Carbon World” by Catherine Tumber, concerning immigrant patterns moving to smaller cities, not larger ones.

2) Opportunity. There is legitimate concern about the future of work in our smallest urban centers. Will limited jobs just go to the wealthiest and most educated? Will the telecommuting elite push out the work opportunities for those without these advantages? Or will it create jobs unattainable for current residents?

Real issue: rural gentrification?

Perhaps the fear that urbanism in its smallest (micropolitan) form is really a fear about displacement; a fear about loss. I’m in no position to speak about the loss many minority populations experienced during the “urban renewal” policies of the sixties. Yet, I’ve witnessed white populations fearfully anticipate shifts that might displace them…shifts that have to do with the changing nature of work as much as cities themselves. For example, there is much anxiety that the “come here’s” will boot out the “been here’s” when it comes to downtowns. That fear isn’t cut along racial lines as much as between socio-economic classes.

As we move into the “urban century” as Neal Peirce calls it, we need to remember two things about our micropolitans: they are increasingly diverse and their social and physical landscapes will inevitably change as does the geography of work on simultaneously global and local levels.

Katie McCaskey writes about indie entrepreneurship in micropolitan cities. Her book, “Urban Escapee: How to Ditch the Commute, Build a Business, and Revitalize Main Street” will be out later this year. Be notified about the book and micropolitan topics by subscribing here, and join the discussion on Facebook.