Category Archives: Politics of Place

Alexandria, Cities, DC, Durham, Essay, malls, mental health, North Carolina, Politics of Place, Retail, suburbs, Things At a Place, transit, urbanism, Weekly Newsletter, Winston-Salem

Community Care at the Mall?

I know they are sites of capitalism, but when I go to the mall, I’m there to find things I need to make my own tools of system dismantlement and comforts through the storm. As we re-examine many of these spaces, they will thrive only if we see them as extensions of our community care, not a money scheme.

This is The Black Urbanist Weekly, an email newsletter that highlights the Black Queer Feminist Urbanist thoughts and commentary of me, Kristen Jeffers, an internationally-known urban planner, fiber designer, and contributing editor. Think of this as an editorial page column, but directly in your email. This week I wanted to check in with one of my first sites of considering urbanism, which seems to get popular around this time of year — the mall. Also, we have a special message from the University of California at San Diego. Learn more about how you can advertise in this newsletter. Prices start at just $75 a week with a four-week commitment.  You can also become a Patreon as an individual and support this work for as little as $5 a month.

I had other plans to end my year of this newsletter, but right after I pulled my wishes together for this year, I realized I had a couple more things to say that were very relevant to this time of year. Hence why this week’s newsletter is in your inboxes and online today and on Monday, I’ll be revisiting and updating my post on Kwanzaa from a Black queer feminist urbanist perspective, but this week, I wanted to take us back to the mall.

This past Saturday, I snapped the photo that leads this post, showing the far northwest corner of Tyson’s Corner Center at full parking capacity. I was in the middle of one of my many social distancing parking lot picnics with Les, my partner, at the Silver Diner across the street. This diner bills itself as part of the mall, but is really only connected by a pedestrian signal and a sidewalk that still has you battling six lanes of traffic, plus one of the mall access roads that can still be treacherous to cross as a pedestrian to one of the many side doors the of the mall.

I digress, but do I really?

Those of you who have been reading my work for the past decade and some change know that I’ve struggled, as many in the journalism community have, with writing accurately about the built environment. I’ve had a particular struggle in writing about an environment that, confirming my suspicions, doesn’t want to support me at my income level and sometimes my skin tone and whom I choose to love, and how I choose to adorn myself.

Yet, despite evidence to the contrary, Cinnabon, Jamba Juice, Barnes and Noble (B&N), Kohls, Sephora, Target, and Michaels seem to be happy to have me, especially on bad days, when the mall is empty enough to social distance and I can take that bun and juice back to the car and grieve over deceased relatives and new health challenges.

I get back home and I curl up into my new sweatsuits that fit my new size with my shiny new crochet hook set and experiment with making machine-washable sweaters. I do so while listening to podcasts or audiobooks I saw the covers of at B&N. Sometimes I color, because lo and behold, not only does B&N have craft magazines, they still have adult coloring books and pencils. Sometimes I just polish off stacks of memoirs. Sometimes Les and I grab a cheesecake or two, like the Golden Girls, to polish off when we get home.

Ok, that is a digression, but right now, just trying to stay alive in a pandemic while having side illnesses and creating our own self-care network that goes beyond the limitations of the built environment on our bodies, has been vital.

And yes, one of those sites of self and community care for us is the enclosed shopping mall and its power center cousins.

Plus, we live in the DC region and several of our shopping malls and plazas are a half-mile or less from the Metro. Others have bus routes. One is the original central business district, which also has transit access, right next to its local yarn store. One is a power center, but by next May, it will have a Metro stop, after years of plans. I dream of the day when its enormous parking lot stops being an asphalt heat island, but a covered lot like The District Wharf with lots of fun restaurants and shops up top.  

In addition, some of the best formal architectural and planning work on how to make these shopping districts better has come from feminine-presenting people, which in general the mall loves the most or thinks is more likely to part with their money. I first found the work of architects Ellen Dunham-Jones and June Williamson on retrofitting suburbia and I was thrilled to do a special chat with them in March of 2021 they released their newest set of Retrofitting Suburbia case studies. Another collective of planners writing online, managed by Nancy Thompson, AICP, has written this article for people who need steps to turn their back mall into something productive.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that so many of these shopping centers are failing because they see themselves as just shopping centers at best and tax shelters at worst. So many suburbs built and “abandoned” have become sites of opportunity for folks like me who are lower income, small business owners, LGBTQIA+,  immigrants and their descendants, and/or descendants of the Black/African enslaved, and who use mobility devices and other disabilities to make a life for ourselves. Many malls and shopping plazas servicing us are reviving, just in a different way. Meanwhile, other places that were built as money schemes are unfortunately failing, especially if they aren’t properly connecting with the communities that use them.

Because of these kinds of closures and disinvestments,  it might be too late for several malls in Les’s home region of Hampton Roads/Tidewater, Virginia. The area is a cluster of small cities with large land areas, divided up by a substantial waterfront, harbor, and naval operations. Some malls are becoming town centers, including one that she and I both visited a lot in our younger years, and went to in August of 2021 before more of it closed down. Others are just doing their best to share holiday cheer before they go away.

However, the malls and town centers I spent my formative years in Northwest and Southwest Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Durham, and just outside the beltline and midtown Raleigh are not all dead but have had a lot of demographic and physical shifts. I spoke in this presentation in January of 2021 about the death and “re-birth” of two (I set this to start at the part where I start talking about this, then I move on from that around the 38-minute mark). I wrote a slightly humorous holiday tale about a few in 2015. If anything, my hometown malls are showing resilience, in the face of so many of the corporate and manufacturing facets of the goods that fill them moving away over two decades ago.

Finally, you might not have thought much about these shopping centers and you may see them with disdain. Hopefully, it’s not because you find yourself lesser than for admitting you shop at these stores. Instead, I hope you consider standing with all the retail workers who make far too little making and serving the items we adore so much, with a glimmer of hope that they can get a store discount, much less a living wage. I hope you also think about how and where we choose to trade and barter goods and services we make with joy and in right-relationship with the environment, much like I did in my 2020 Sierra Magazine piece. 

And I hope whichever holidays you choose to observe this year, you do so with joy. Since it took me a minute to get you this week’s newsletter, I’ll be right back in your inbox on Monday, with a revisit of my 2012 post on Kwanzaa as a community holiday, on its first day this year, and how it can become more queer and feminist along with being Black and urbanist.

By the Way

If you’re new here, I write out my grand thesis of the week above, then I share other articles/videos that were noteworthy for me this week in this section. Apologies in advance for things behind a paywall. Some things I subscribe to and others I grab just before the wall comes down on me. I will start marking these articles and describing them.

Nearly an hour after posting this tweet last week about suburbs of survival, I finished editing this piece for GGWash of fellow urbanist writer Addison Del Mastro, on the wild and winding history of this Pizza Hut in what we consider the central part of  Prince Georges County, MD. I was also captivated by his article on the suburbs as we know them being a “first draft”. I’ll be revisiting these ideas in the new year, of changing definitions and feelings of “suburbia”.

Meanwhile, I received other confirmation/affirmation in my Black queer feminist journey from this examination of the late Black feminist Toni Cade Bambara’s 1970s questioning of the gender roles placed upon us as Black folks and  Black construction company executive Deryl McKissack’s article from 2021 on her perspective on defining yourself for yourself. I plan on taking lots of time over this week to not be on social and finding inspiration from within myself and non-digital or digitized written sources. 

And I considered holding this link until next week, but I know many of you are either going to be a Black Santa or you’re looking for one and I really loved how my friend and brilliant Baltimore-based essayist Alanna Nicole Davis described how Baltimore’s holiday celebrations can still be discriminatory and segregated through the hook of a Black Santa everywhere, but Hampden, which is internationally known for its neighborhood Christmas celebrations. (This may be paywalled for you).

Before You Go

The folks at the University of California, San Diego would love for you to know about not just one, but two tenue-track jobs they have available next year. Plus, some housekeeping about our little space. First the two jobs.

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING

The Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of California, San Diego invites

applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor working in the area of urban studies and

planning to begin July 1, 2023.

This is a position for a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Urban Studies and

Planning at UC San Diego, a rapidly-growing department with strategic emphases on social and spatial justice; climate justice; and multinational planning.

The department is interested in candidates who have demonstrated commitment to excellence by strong engagement in teaching, research, and service toward building an equitable and diverse scholarly environment. The successful candidate will be an excellent scholar with an active research program in one or more of the following areas: transportation planning; climate change mitigation and adaptation; environment and land use planning; health and wellness, and/or spatial analytics.

The University of California, San Diego is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer advancing inclusive excellence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, covered veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.

Department: https://usp.ucsd.edu

Apply link: https://apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF03452

Open date: November 21, 2022

Next review date: Tuesday, Jan 31, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)

Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.

Final date: Friday, Mar 31, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)

Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.

***

And…

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN URBAN STUDIES AND PLANNING WITH A

FOCUS ON DESIGNING JUST FUTURES

The Department of Urban Studies and Planning seeks faculty candidates at the level of Assistant Professor whose research, teaching, and service will advance scholarship and institutional solutions for designing more just and equitable systems and structures.

This faculty member will advance UC San Diego’s commitment to the inclusion of Indigenous, Black, and migrant communities, anti-racism, anti-oppression, equity, and social justice. We especially welcome candidates whose professional experience, community engagement, and personal background have facilitated their understanding of and ability to better serve students from Indigenous and other underrepresented populations.

Faculty hired under this Initiative will join the UC San Diego campus, the UC San Diego Design Lab (https://designlab.ucsd.edu/), and the Indigenous Futures Institute (https://ifi.ucsd.edu/) to forge a new paradigm of engagement and collaboration that draws on the geographic, academic, institutional, and cultural strengths of our tri-national region across Southern California, Baja California, and the Kumeyaay region.

This search is part of a UC San Diego-wide cluster hire on Designing Just Futures (https://www.design-just-futures.ucsd.edu/) that aims to recruit scholars who can contribute to the advancement of design, social justice, and Indigenous, Black, and migrant futures and seeks engagement with scholars across disciplines to address issues of territory, access, and equity, and social and political debates pertinent to Indigenous, Black, border, and migrant communities, while also working within their home departments and professional communities.

Department: https://usp.ucsd.edu

Apply link: https://apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF03484

Next review date: Tuesday, Jan 31, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)

Apply by this date to ensure full consideration by the committee.

Final date: Friday, Mar 31, 2023 at 11:59pm (Pacific Time)

Applications will continue to be accepted until this date, but those received after the review date will only be considered if the position has not yet been filled.

***

I know I’ve been promising that I’ll be live on LinkedIn and YouTube and Instagram and I haven’t forgotten! I’ll be doing my wishes video live on Wednesday, December 28 and a video about these two holiday-themed newsletters Thursday, December 29. Both of these will go live around the noon hour Eastern.

***

I have created a special landing page, www.theblackurbanist.com/books, that’s not only a home for my upcoming volume, A Black Urbanist Journey to a Queer Feminist Future, which I just chatted with my editor with this week,  but I have embedded my Bookshop.org booklists here as well since we were having so many issues with the link. Go here for all things books I’ve read and my book when it comes out!

***

As of today, I am on holiday break from any client projects. I’ll be releasing my Kwanzaa email, making those videos, and doing some 2023 strategic planning and newsletter writing. I’ll release my 2023 Capabilities Deck in the first weeks of January along with a video to pair to explain what my calendar will look like in 2023 and how you can plug into it this year. 

***

Thank you for supporting last year’s capital campaign. Thanks to you, this year, I was able to cover my web hosting, enhance this newsletter, and position myself to take on some other client projects. However,  if you want to send me money for quick expenses or like a tip jar, you can Venmo me. I will also be introducing a paid tier for Substack and Medium users to also function like a tip jar.

***

Happy holidays and talk soon,

Kristen

Essay, Kristen's Mind, media, mental health, migration, Money and the City, Moving and Migration, placemaking, planning, Politics of Place, urbanism

Are There Really Too Many Planners in Certain Metro Areas?

Recently, I was made aware of and responded to this series of threads on Twitter, that among my colleagues in the D.C. area, there’s a concern over how many practitioners of place,  especially planners, exist in the metro area and how many folks want to be planners by name, versus just doing the work in many different aspects of the field.
 
I’ve heard this before, from planners and related advocates, architects, engineers and others who do community work of all races and from all other regions of the U.S. I’m not surprised and I do know why I hear this so much.
 
I’ve talked about it before, but as I’ll mention in the final section, I want to shift my thoughts and takes back to this site, where I own the server space and have plenty of room to link to things. 
 

Why There’s Merit in the Too Many Planners Argument 

First,  few clients exist in need of architecture and building services as well as transportation planning and operations, that don’t already have existing contracts and people they use. Even for general environmental planning, or acceptance of environmental injustice, there’s a drought. Your client base/employment options are limited greatly.
 
The one most people are aware of are government entities, which have all kinds of requirements to ensure fairness and equity in the awarding of work contracts to firms, but sometimes can be cumbersome and create competitive environments. Also, for legal reasons, which yes, have merit, you have to be careful what you talk about and who you talk to when it comes to these competitions. Which can be hard when most of the people you compete with were at one point studio classmates or internship cubemates. Or even better, roommates or lovers. Plus, if you elect to work in-house with a government entity, you have other ethical considerations and gag orders, which again, are often necessary. Finally, some things, like public transit, just make more sense to be governed by you know, the government and for their privatization to be regulated, if there’s privatization at all.
 
Or, you work with private for or non-profit developers, without government funding, some who are in the business to create things that make our world better and some are in the business to take from others and make gobs of money from themselves. Now for-profit doesn’t always mean capitalist monster, just like non-profit doesn’t always mean charitable and for the people. Many places need to build or renovate homes, build or renovate transportation systems and honestly, build or renovate a lot of other pieces of the built environment or society. However, there’s even a limit there to how much people can build and operate.
 
Speaking of the nonprofits, you could be or work with an advocacy group with a dash of service provision, but you’re often getting your money from government grants, private grants or private banks, so there’s not that much difference from what I mentioned above. There’s also a size issue, some contracting firms might as well be power brokers, while others like me are just small shingles.
 
Basically, if you’re new to the idea of planners/architects/engineers/contracting, all these firms operate and build like law firms and attorneys as well as media outlets and journalists. We also have lawyers in our clubhouse too and they can tell you what their lives have been like as they’ve seen a shortage in labor and emphasis on big versus small especially over the last 10 years. And this site, if you haven’t already picked that up is a journalistic outfit ;).
 
The next big argument against a growing class of capital p planners is the public will of the citizenry.  Some well-meaning folks, as well as your usual villains in many jurisdictions and metro areas, fail to provide adequate funding, maintenance and even just the creation of adequate transportation, housing, environmental quality, and education systems. For that, I do suggest that more people with a good grasp of land use planning, construction, and operations, run for elective office and approve budgets that fund these things, as well as go to public meetings, especially ones that offer you the chance to pick budget items to fund or for items that are in active stages of construction or pre-construction, where changes can be made.
 
Then there’s human prejudice, marginalization and power dynamics unrelated to land use and planning, that still affect the profession. This encompasses the lingering hurt and harm done to those of us who started as enthusiasts or hobbyists of architecture or transportation systems, as well as the marginalization of community groups or communities period, especially black, brown, queer and poor groups.
 
Plus, some groups just don’t talk to each other or talk over each other. I can’t tell you how many arguments, especially online, would be solved if the two entities would do a thorough review of the bodies of work and life experiences that have been shared, on the internet, as well as in offline resources. Not just professional work, but considering how lived experiences affect how people see the world, especially the environment which we all battle over.
 
All this gets wrapped up into how we interact and I think that to go forward, we have to address this elephant.

How This Affects Me Directly

This conversation hits me so much because it’s directly related to why I’m going through a tough time. 
 
In doing my reader’s survey, I learned that many of you started following me (or at least those of you still paying attention enough to fill out my survey), in or after 2014. Since that’s the case, you may have only realized in passing how much the loss of my dad in 2013 has reshaped almost every aspect of my life. I think that taking a detour into what brought me to this post today, which has been discussed in other parts of the site before, is valid because some of you have yet to peruse the archives!
 
When he was living, my dad was a very an active force on how I approached the built environment. From him teaching me how to ride and care for a bike, to me going along on some of his electrical contracting jobs and sometimes to the school buildings he helped maintain, to the way he never met a stranger and how proud he was of my achievements (my degrees were on HIS resume), he had a very outsized presence in my life and loved being part of my online stories and life.
 
He also understood what it’s like to struggle with the ups and downs of having a professional services business, and also needing a job to pay benefits. He went through open discrimination on the job. When I would cry about my own similar issues, instead of just leaving things as that’s the way it is (and he would say that in a Walter Cronkite voice impression), we would scheme about how to change and fix it. Neither of us would accept no for an answer and we didn’t accept that just because that’s the way it is, that’s the way it should stay. Then, all of a sudden, 50% of him was gone due to a major accident in 2010 and finally, all of him was gone over Memorial Day weekend of 2013.
 
Not having my parent to debate the ways of the world unconditionally with, lurched me into a state of trying to find that in other family members, friends and colleagues. It, along with the awareness of middle-class, suburban Black American police shootings and other random racialized violence and incidents, plus microaggressions that ballooned in my post-graduate school, post-2013 working environments drew me into the state of rage that James Baldwin so eloquently illustrated. It also fuels, much like Baldwin, my want and love of travel and moving away from bad situations.
 
Additionally, my mom and several other family members with similar experiences of racism and business-making are more private people and that’s why I share very little of them on here. While I love how connected the Internet makes us, I’m a firm believer in respecting privacy and that some things will always remain secret.
 
However, I wouldn’t have felt the need to move so much, if one, there were other options professionally to fix the mistake that got me fired from my design services firm in Greensboro in 2014 and the dating life I’ve not really had anywhere, especially given my sensitivity to partners, namely male, respecting my brain and ambitions. Plus, political work often leaves you with more enemies than friends and such a critical analysis of what’s wrong with society, it’s very difficult to see and embrace what’s working right. I’m dealing with the opposite of what my colleague Chuck Marohn has shared recently. There’s very little of the negative I don’t see, I just don’t comment on everything and clearly, this website has been stringing cobwebs as I just realized this is my first full blog post that isn’t a newsletter copy I’ve written in 2018.
 
When I left North Carolina for Kansas City in 2015, I felt like I was giving up on North Carolina, as I discussed in great detail last year. I felt like I couldn’t be a die-hard supporter of the betterment of my home state without being in said state. On the other hand of the lack of urbanist media focus on North Carolina, alternatives to car transportation, alternatives to certain kinds of single and multi-family housing, and the issues mentioned above,  made me believe that I couldn’t do what I wanted to do in North Carolina.
 
I brought that baggage with me to Kansas City, along with the pull of a partner who lived in what I considered the optimal environment for urbanist debate and planning, as it had some of the functions that we all advocate for, as well as again, a class of folks who love to debate and talk about it constantly. I would no longer get teased or harassed for only talking about this at the expense of other things. (Mind you, doing anything, including being an urbanist, in excess, is a recipe for disaster).
 
So when I left Kansas City for D.C. in 2016, my goal was to establish myself in that greater collective of urbanist minds thinking through solutions on a national level.
 
However, as has been well documented, this moving back east plan backfired.
 
I’ve barely made any real money, wrecked my credit and ability to have credit lines, barely had health insurance and healthcare and of course, the relationship that was the foundation of my move to D.C. broke down. Somehow I’ve managed to scrape by, but it’s taken me moving all around and thankfully, folks still finding value in these kinds of writings on the sense of place and the experience of being out in the world. That and finding a flexible barista gig that will finally come with full benefits. And before that, having a community up in Baltimore that took me in when things got really tight and tough in D.C.
 
Additionally, in many cities, including the ones in my home state, as well as the greater Kansas City region, we are a very culturally in-tune people and in cities where rail, bike-share, and enhanced bus services are available, we do park our cars and use those services. We also know how to park our cars and walk down our one-two main streets. And yes, there may only be a couple, but they are well utilized. This happens across class and race lines as well. I had to learn this the hard way as well, that I’ve been way too pretentious for my own good, in assuming that other cities would never be capable of the urbanity I so wanted from them.
 
Finally, having traveled and worked in so many states and the District of Columbia, I’ve found that every state and the District has some form of discriminatory or structural issue that causes marginalization. Plus, migration as a whole creates multiple cultural awareness and needs to balance one’s personality with one’s environment.

So What Now?

I hope that with this post, it’s clear, to both new and old followers and colleagues, exactly why I decided to leave North Carolina, come and go from Kansas City and come and go to the Greater Washington/Baltimore region, as well as travel often and broaden my ideals of land use and environmental thought, planning and doing. 
 
Additionally, this is how I would like to address the elephant of too many planners in too few places.
  • Acknowledge that all cities are different, and have different land use and planning needs, therefore creating many urbanisms/rualisms/placeisms, etc. Also, I’ve debated replacing my references to urbanism, with placeism. Placeism is the concern with all aspects of land use and natural environments, urbanism focuses mostly on the densification of those environments.  Dr. Lisa Schweitzer has a great breakdown of how she uses the terminology and echoes things I’ve said in this post and in prior posts. I also invite anyone who is unfamiliar with the urban to rural transect to get to know more about that and use that to help as you advocate formally, design and build things and especially in these online arguments where people want to create a utopia in ten tweets. Also, feel free to engage ways that the transect is limiting and build upon this to establish a standard of broadening how we talk about the environments we inhabit. Coming to terms with the differences in terrain and resources is also helpful if you’re in the field in a jurisdiction that doesn’t have some of the infrastructure you want and need, to start productive conversations with people about that, that may yield the support system that you absolutely need to not go crazy like I did and jump off the proverbial cliff. Finally, let’s get out of the habit of saying X person or groups of people suck for having to drive or having to live in a cul-de-sac or only being able to  shop at Walmart, when we need to be yelling at public officials, proposing new ordinances and maybe suing dishonest developers for creating this environment. Everyone shouldn’t have to be a planner to make sure we don’t get mistreated as citizens.
  • You don’t have to be a capital p planner, capital a architect, capital d developer, capital e engineer or some other bold-faced title to make it in this world, but it makes it easier if you have a history of discrimination or marginalization to have this layer of professional knowledge. This was the core of the most recent tweets, that you don’t have to be a planner to make a difference. However, we need to absolutely acknowledge that for some folks, especially from marginalized and disrespected backgrounds, it’s not so much that they need to have the job title, but the security of the letters next to their name or a paper certificate to be taken seriously. Let’s also make sure we stop making people feel the need to over-credential just to get paid what they are worth or recieve job and project assignments on which they will be excellent. 
  • If someone says they want to launch a career in a land use and planning related field, offer to sit down with them and launch out a plan. You can plan a career and not get afoul of reporting requirements for government grants or even threaten your own job and space in the profession. I will say that in one conversation where I heard there were too many planners in D.C. and I was one of them, this person gave me some excellent book recommendations and jobs to consider. The tweet stream I reference also has good ideas of how other jobs can still allow you to make places better and stronger.  Additionally, I’ve added a resources section to this site and developing some offline resources to help you and others make the right decisions about where to plant yourselves in the greater land use world. In the meantime, my short guide on figuring out your career in this world. Also, don’t be as stubborn as me and not listen when people do offer to help until it’s almost too late.
I wrote this post because I wanted to spell out in more than 250 characters tied into multiple threads, how much this subject of who does what in the land use and planning world, affects me. I feel like so much is lost in the current environment of Twitter and Facebook, where we value hot takes and yelling at the choir of our individual Facebook groups, over the long-form solution making that even venues like this often don’t meet.
 
I also want to establish a standard for myself and our profession going forward. That we all sit at a big table,  and there’s room for all of us, as long as we come to sit there with mutual respect and the mind that we will push for solutions, even if that solution is to do nothing and let things be. No one is perfect all the time, but no one is beyond reproof, restitution or forgiveness either.
Finally, this site is about to look very different and will no longer just be me sharing ideas and resources. I’m looking forward to returning in a few weeks with new things that I believe will help us all become better at what we do. In the meantime, introducing my Resources page and my job/opportunities b

Never heard of me before this post? come over here and let’s get to know each other better.  This platform doesn’t have a paywall,  but I still need to eat. Buy me a meal via PayPal or Cash App, or many meals via Patreon.

 

mental health, migration, Mobility, Politics of Place

On The Constant State of Motion Through Imperfect Cities

Via Wikimedia Commons

There’s no perfect city. We also can’t expect people to fix cities and not bear the brunt of what it means to be the only person in a city who seems to have all the answers.

And I am not that savior. I love helping you fix them, but I can’t do this all alone.

Aaron Renn and I may not see eye to eye on everything, even with urbanism, but we always seem to come back to the same place when it comes to needing to move to find the right place.

In Governing recently, he asked cities to again reconsider making everyone fit into it and being upset when people, namely people who are seen as promising leaders, movers and shakers, leave. I wanted to drop these two paragraphs in because they really spoke to me:

I travel around to cities across the country and always come into contact with highly talented and motivated people. But there is often a huge divide between those who get traction and find success in a particular place and those who do not. I’ve been puzzled as to why some people who seem to be skilled and sharp are frustrated in these places while others seem to be thriving. Many of the frustrated people leave and find great success elsewhere. This is then cited as evidence of “brain drain.”

The truth is, sometimes there just isn’t a cultural fit between a person and a city. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with either of them, just that they have incompatible styles. It’s the same as with companies, where a great person might not succeed at a great company simply because there’s not a cultural fit.

First of all, Aaron, thank you for reminding cities that one they have and two, they need to kill their inferiority complex.

Secondly, sometimes you need that reminder that you’re not doing anything wrong.

As much as I know I shouldn’t be seeking approval in others and that it’s a nice side effect over the years that this blog and my later ventures have garnered attention, I still struggle.

I’ve been solving my own city living/occupation-making/relationship-building puzzle for years.

This puzzlement, this feeling of being wrong, and the greater struggle, some of which I wrote about trying to overcome earlier this year, has kept me from being my best self. However, I’d like to first speak to the roots of my discomfort, the simple of act of having to move from home to home over the years.

A Life of Movement

Moving has always been a traumatic experience for me. For the first nine years of my life, I was fortunate that I was able to live with both parents in the same house with my own room and a big backyard that several of the neighborhood kids and grandkids could come and play in. This was 1940s-era suburbia in Greensboro, so imagine a 2 bedroom, 1 bathroom ranch with a picture window in the living room a sizable eat-in-kitchen and a generous front porch with curly awning.  Also, because this is the south, we’ve been inside of the principal city for years, almost since the time the neighborhood was built.

I had a nice swing set, trees, a sandbox and enough room for pick up softball and other major playground games like hide-and-go seek.

However, my parents needed to separate and  divorce. My dad kept our old house and I moved with my mom to a garden apartment a little further out but still part of the city. Five years later mom and I moved to our own house just inside the city limits. 

The apartment had a playground and our unit faced it. Unlike our old yard, my mom couldn’t control and approve who got to play there, so I didn’t play there often and I began to stop going outside to play. Even at my dad’s, where he got me the camping tent I wanted, in addition to all my other old backyard toys, and I spent every other weekend and Tuesday and Thursday nights and a week in the summer. At my mom’s I’d just watch the playground kids from my window, some of whom were my new classmates at my new school, and then turn back to a The Babysitter’s Club book or my Macintosh desktop computer.

This alone, along with my bookishness, caused me a lot of teasing at my new elementary school. Not that I wasn’t teased at my kindergarten and the other elementary school I spent my first through third grade years at, but at least I had a refuge at home.

My parents did do a good job of making sure they spent time with me both inside and outside the house. When it was time to go off to college, my dad was with me every year I needed to move, to load the moving van that I managed to accumulate over the years, and then move me into my first apartment, out of that apartment, and then into my beloved downtown Greensboro second apartment.

I lost him before the move back out of my second apartment and I’ve been at the mercy of moving companies and folks who happened to have a bit of spare time ever since.

While I’ve adjusted to not being able to have conversations with my dad, I’ve not adjusted to the deferred dreams of working on a fixer-upper in my dream city that we had. Nor have I adjusted to having to do so much literal heavy lifting myself, when I’ve wanted to make a strategic move, like I did when I came to D.C.

Meanwhile,  my mom really wanted me to have a home to come back to, and I’ve been extremely grateful for my two trips back home as a resident, as well as summers during college and most of my post nine-year-old life.

Additionally, when she went back to full-time work as a teacher, she was often forced to move classrooms each school year. I used to loathe the end and the beginning of school, because of the time and the emotional weight of having to help her with all those moves.

As I’ve gotten older and had to make moves for my professional success, both with a mixture of trepidation and excitement, I’ve come to understand just why it took so long for us to pack up and rebuild her classroom each year.

As of this writing, I’m looking at having to move again. The basement I’ve been living in has flooded a multitude of times over the summer and I can’t take living in the moldy goo anymore. Plus, to add insult to injury, the temp job I was working has ended and I’m now scrambling to figure out what’s next.

I already felt confined at that job and I’m coming to the realization that often doing the professional work one loves means living in a city that may have less to offer in amenities.

Maybe I’ve not found the right group of folks and funding, but I do increasingly feel like I can’t do what I would like to do in D.C., at least not creatively. In the interim, I’m spending more time in Baltimore and have tested out living there these past few weeks. Also, leaving the United States was already an option pre-presidential election and has become even more of one post-presidential election.

Whose Brain’s Being Drained?

This gets me back to Aaron and his article and a lot of his own work over the years. He mentioned the words “brain drain”, often used by city boosters to mock those who leave despite having characteristics on the surface that they want.

Or do they really want those brains? Sometimes I feel they only want the money and the appearances that come from our thoughts and the jobs and art we create with them.

Oh and sometimes even the jobs and art aren’t enough if you come in the wrong hue, orientation or income bracket.

Even just today at this writing, another issue of the right to public space and provision of social services has come up in my hometown and it just saddens and drains me that most of the power élite, who are on the one hand celebrating innovation, can’t understand that cites thrive from the mixture of folks. Even the folks who have made mistakes have something of value and they definitely don’t thrive when we don’t give them a hand-up!

Granted, I know my hometown isn’t the only one having this problem, but it’s the most personal and hurtful example.

It also hearkens back to why I believe there’s no perfect city. I’m shifting my focus on being a connoisseur of cities. I believe all of them can grow and work, but there are some that don’t nurture me at all and I’m done with naming one or the other as the next best thing for me.

Check back in with me though and I may have found a more permanent spot.

In the meantime, I’ll be on the move, with hesitation, but at least I know my brain isn’t getting siphoned off.

I’m Kristen. I started blogging here to make sense of the built environment around me. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can find out more about me at my main website, www.kristenejeffers.com. Get job listings, interesting articles, links to future posts and more from me via my weekly email. Support my work on Patreon.

Politics of Place, Rural, urbanism

Open Thoughts on the U.S. Election Results

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Looking back at San Francisco from the Rockridge Station in Oakland. I wanted to note one of last night's victories, more money for the BART system. Image by Malcolm Kenton
Looking back at San Francisco from the Rockridge Station in Oakland. I wanted to note one of last night’s victories, more money for the BART system. Image by Malcolm Kenton

I assume most of you are probably in a state of either shock or fear or a combination of the two. I wanted to write a note here, so you’ll know that someone is listening one and two, that you’re not alone and three, so I can process these things. The platform is here for a reason and I’m using it for this today.

First of all, at the local and state levels, some strong advocates and leaders were elected for the first time or re-elected. Some strong leaders were very close to winning. And the presidential election itself on a county-by-county level was very close. While there were some places that flipped, others stayed the same or were stable.

Additionally, I’m so proud of all the cities that voted for transit or other infrastructure bonds. There’s also been an idea that in the new presidential administration, that an infrastructure measure of great consequence may actually happen. I can see that, as many of the transit referenda went forth in places that went red last night.

Going forward, I do think we need to tackle that civic-inferiority complex, along with our own inferiority complexes. We need to listen to all people. We need to make sure they are all fed and have the opportunity for healthcare without the extreme financial burdens. We need to make sure they all have a place to live. We need to stay out of bedrooms and church houses and other places that if we don’t have to go, we don’t have to go. If someone isn’t attacking you, don’t be a bully. Believe what you believe, but don’t attack people or be a bully in the pursuit of your own feelings of needing a person to be a certain way for you to feel some kind of self-worth. Sometimes we deal with this in our own families or colleagues or classmates and even longtime friends. I think our first step is to accept who they are, discuss things tactfully and then when it’s clear that mindset change is not happening on a particular day, move on and focus back on ourselves and self-worth and self-love and our improvements that we’ve been told we should do, through various means.

I know that many times in the past six years, I’ve written people off, people who have no intention of being violent or who really just want answers to questions, because I don’t like how they say it or what they say. I think we have done this a lot over the past few years and really over the past 50 years since we decided collectively that all people should have rights, but on the flip side they only have rights if they do things our way and in our moralities. Do realize that this country is not unified under one moral code. Other than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. Also realize that we have built this country under systems that have always privileged a select few. However, because we had language in our constitution that stated otherwise, we as people in the United States have felt like we can have a fair shot at challenging those norms.

On the flip side, we need to redefine the American Dream such that it doesn’t require extreme wealth and the appearance of success to succeed. We need to stop making it about what we own as so much as to what we can offer in our own creativity and grit and love.

Our cities must continue to fix and maintain and build better transportation systems. We need to wipe the terms market-rate and affordable out of our housing conversation and just talk about housing. We need to commit to a common, free, lifelong education system. We need clean water and air. We need free or low-cost healthcare. Our first responders and protectors that seek to protect and serve, need do that not just fear and bully and kill. Our regions and cities should  their citizens before investing in corporations that may or may not stay around long enough to build the economy. We should respect the rural areas and the breadbasket of our nation and instead of shaming suburban people, looking at it for what it is and doing our best to create real, functional towns and villages out of the various sprigs of development that we have.

Additionally, I ask that you respect those of us, who may have chosen third parties and who may take this opportunity to choose another country of residence. We live on a globe, not just a flat piece of land and there are many more issues and places and ideas that we need to address. Many of us look to Copenhagen and Amsterdam for bike/ped infrastructure, and to South Korea for rail infrastructure. We need to be looking outside the box, especially if all that changes is that all of the new laws of the last eight years are repealed. If we are allowed to continue to exist as a democracy, if we aren’t at risk of deportation, or extreme public shunning or shaming, or being killed, we can start the conversations we need to have at the local and state level on new leadership. We can be more innovative with whom we choose as leaders. Or, much as I’m an American expat in America, we can visit and live and work in other places, build up income and experience and come back home and shift our country.

In 2020, I will be old enough to run for president. Not saying that I’ll exercise my right then and that it will be available, but I want us to think about what the world could look like as soon as next year, when there will be more elections and maybe local ones you can plug into and start building the seeds to help us get back to a better place.

And finally, let us be courageous and keep living our normal lives. The oppressor wins when we bow down and we change our lives. Let’s be our best selves until the end.

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.

Commons, gentrification, Kansas City, Politics of Place, urbanism

Place in A Time of Terror and Inequality

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Place in A Time of Terror and Inequality by Kristen Jeffers, The Black Urbanist

This post took so long to write. I wrote about two versions of it. Maybe you’ll see them in the next volume of essays. Maybe they’ll be here. Ultimately, it gets down to how place and motion matter in a time of heightened instances of tragedy, terror and oppressive power driven by fear.

How can we say that design is our savior, when in one of the most perfectly designed cities in America, a man who was born in the 1990’s, one of the most progressive time periods in our history for race relations, decided to go to a church and even though he was moved by the friendliness and fellowship of the people. shot them anyway because they were Black and they were a threat to “his” women?

I just took a cross-country road trip to start a great new job, at an organization that’s committed to asking questions and getting answers everyday for design and use equity when it comes to everyday transportation. I brought my family with me mainly because I didn’t want to be alone. What if they couldn’t have come with me? What if I had made an error that was easily correctable in my car, got pulled over and after a series of events, I ended up dead in my cell, seemingly of my own devices?

And for the record, I can’t say what I would do if I went to jail. I am fearful at times and who knows what the shock of the experience would lead me to do if I feel like I’ll never get out alive anyway. But I will try to get out and stay alive as long as I can. Think of me as Olivia Pope in [spoiler alert] the jail last season, the first time she went to jail that is. [/spoiler].

As I look around and take in the sights, sounds and climate of my new metro area, I do find it sad the effects of sprawl very present in the area. Some sprawl has been useful or unavoidable. Bluffs aren’t always your friend. Major stockyards, wartime facilities and even farms need space. However, the huge legacy of Native removal and assimilation, as well as the redlining that kept many Blacks in certain areas, areas that are still underfunded and even abandoned is always a present thing.

The fact that so many of the box stores that used to only be ten minutes away, are now 20-30. Myself and Amazon are about to become friends, because in reality, none of these major chain stores or warehouses have the best records on wages, product quality and treatment of customers. I do have a Costco and Home Depot in walking distance and they’re some of the better ones, for being willing to pay well and have a presence in the inner city.

In spite of all of this that’s weighed heavy on my mind in the past few weeks between posts and moving and such, I still see hope. I love my colleagues and their commitment to making sure everybody can get where they need to go, car or not. “Right” side or “Wrong” side of town. I’m thankful for the many times I’ve been able to board planes, trains or ferries alone and without question. The ability to cross international borders and be seen as role model in my time in the other country. To be able to drive my car long distances, both alone and with company and have been able to escape the worst reaches of the law. And of course, all of my loved ones, friends and fellow foot soldiers in planning and development that I’ve been able to meet and work with over the years.

Even if that all were to change tomorrow, I am grateful for the life that’s been granted to me, the few privileges I have. I will dwell in those and I will continue to work to make sure everyone has the opportunities to be well and live well, no matter how they get where they are going, where they live and what stores are available to them to supply their lives. And of course, no matter skin color or who they choose to make a life with or how they present themselves.

And a postscript: Check out how real estate is done in this Chicagoland town. What if this was a wholesale solution to the problem of real estate segregation, which has undertones in the struggles in many areas to stop both failing schools and police brutality.
Another postscript, this book I was gifted about growth in Kansas City.

Atlanta, Cities, Family and Place, Government, Issues and Ideas, Politics of Place, Raleigh, snow

What Should You Do When Weird Weather Shows Up?

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Sometimes, all you can do is make sure you buy enough food at Harris Teeter to get ready for weird weather.
Sometimes, all you can do is make sure you buy enough food at Harris Teeter to get ready for weird weather.

So we’ve had another situation of weather causing bizarre things to happen. Whether it’s snow in Atlanta or a major hurricane in New York, Americans seem to never tire of comparisons to the zombie apocalypse or The Day After Tomorrow. Never mind that in a few weeks we’ll forget this never happened, while those affected may still not have their old house back almost 10 years later.

So this all leads me to what we should and shouldn’t do, at least when it comes to community-building and placemaking and management, when a natural disaster happens.

Take those personal natural disaster plans seriously.

Don’t be the person who giggles when it’s time to stop, drop and roll. You’ll want to roll into a ball if you didn’t remember to pack a blanket, clothes and everything else that goes into a roadside disaster emergency kit. So you’re a bike or subway kid, throw an extra shirt and your meds into your bag. Even planes will let you carry those on. Let your pipes drip. Sprinkle the ice melt. Make sure you can fit in the bathtub. Drink enough water and put on sunscreen.  Drive slow, but not too slow. Sometimes we need to admit that there are some effects of natural disasters we can prevent.

Act as a region or have a plan for regional disaster preparedness

As we saw in Atlanta with #snowgridlock, and of course famously with Katrina in New Orleans, the powers-to-be were not even ready for what they saw. Yes, you may salt the roads. Yes, the weatherman on TV may move the eye of the storm further south. But that doesn’t excuse why you don’t have enough money for the right amount of disaster preparedness.  It doesn’t allow you to blame the municipality next door that you don’t like and claim as a blight on society. Anyone who wants and needs to go to a shelter should be able to. If people want to guard their homes or stay outside, let them (I just warned them about their safety). However, if you as a municipality have no real plan for the weather, then yes, you deserve the shame that you get. Side note to all the issues involved with no transit in Atlanta. Yes having more MARTA trains could have helped.  Still,  the night this was all happening, I saw two trains come into the Greensboro station and sit there for 30 minutes to an hour longer than they should have. Remember when half of Manhattan’s tunnels flooded during Hurricane Sandy? Transportation breaks down sometimes. Sometimes.

Don’t laugh at or perpetrate problematic stereotypes of people in trouble.

We love to use weather events that are abnormal to bring up stereotypes, right? The only exception would probably be with earthquakes and tornadoes. I was quite disturbed with the coverage of the Southern #snowgridlock that was making fun of people sleeping and staying wherever they could for upwards of 24-48 hours, which in some cases meant Whole Foods, Home Depot, The Waffle House  and at worse their car claiming that this is why we as Southerners were so backwards. So all the folks that get stranded at Logan and JFK during northern storms are funny too? Oh and don’t get me started on the “refugees” of New Orléans from Hurricane Katrina.

Keep the Home Depot or _______________(business/school/church) Open To Make Sure People Are Ok

There’s a reason schools are routinely used as disaster shelters when people know that something big and bad is coming. They have room for tons of cots, they have massive cafeterias, many have locker rooms with lots of showers. Hence why the kids that were stuck at them were better off than the rest of us. What I loved about what happened in the 2014 Atlanta and Birmingham situation is that I was that so many of these non-traditional shelters stayed open and did what they could to keep people entertained and fed and the like. Southern hospitality is the one stereotype I love and I love it because that’s community and placemaking at its highest point.

Don’t Share Information That’s Not True

If you don’t listen to anything I say on this post, please listen to this, be careful what you tweet or share on social networks, especially when it comes to a major storm system or something else that is happening in real time. Hence why I shared multiple views of the Atlanta storm and emphasized the ground coverage being done in Atlanta by news outlets and Instagrams and Twitters from actual residents of the cities that were affected. Also, make sure your information on relief efforts is coming from the right area nonprofit. All Red Crosses are not the same and able to do the same things. Also, tweeting something like the name of someone who died before the family can get the phone call is also insensitive.

Feel Guilty When You Can’t Keep Something Bad from Happening

Some of us chatting about the Atlanta storm response were reminded of 2005 in Raleigh. I thought I was going to take the campus Wolfline bus back to my dorm , but instead all the buses stopped running and Hillsborough Street was gridlocked, along with much of the Triangle. All that kept me from doing is getting a ride home versus walking like I normally do. Other people were stranded at schools and offices too. Yet, this time Raleigh closed school early, preventing any surprises as far as weather from affecting the students and parents throughout the county. Yet, the folks who get hit by freakish tornadoes and 100 year floods can’t always be ready for the worst. That’s ok, just do your best as individuals and as a community to be ready.

So this ends my PSA on disaster preparedness and coping. Hopefully this reminder will help us continue to grow stronger communities, especially when we and the weather are at our worst.

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

The Privilege of Urbanism, The Democracy of Placemaking

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Privilege.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Civic Inferiority Complex, Politics of Place, What is urban planning?

Voting with Your Feet: The Cure for the Civic Inferiority Complex?

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Many times we second guess who we are, what we do, and why we do it. This is known in the field of psychology as an inferiority complex. Collins English Dictionary defines it as “a disorder arising from the conflict between the desire to be noticed and the fear of being humiliated, characterized by aggressiveness or withdrawal into oneself.”

I took this concept one step further last year and applied it to the civic sphere. My enhanced definition of the civic inferiority complex is when one person or a major leadership or civic organization sees something in another city or place and feels immediately inadequate. They then overcompensate for that loss by building or starting whatever that place has, even if it’s not a good fit for them. A good example of this would be when cities build convention centers, entertainment districts, science parks, or some other major “economic eggs in one basket” initiative.

The other side of the traditional definition speaks of a withdrawal unto oneself. I think for municipalities, this can be positive if it includes a greater self-reflection, with all the diverse voices of a municipality gathering at the table and coming to consensus on what is next and what is best. Yet, if a municipality shuns outside constructive voices of change, or creates similar, but poor policy decisions, then it is just as destructive. For a person, it may mean that they feel powerless in their own hometown and begin accepting the status quo, because they believe they are not capable of doing anything better.

When I wrote my original presentation, it was very much of the time it was written and also contained a lot of my own personal frustration. It underscores just how much an inferiority complex is personal and public. In addition, I left out something that appears to be the “cure” for the civic inferiority complex: voting with your feet.

A concept recently revisited in a 2012 research paper by Professor Ilya Somin of the George Mason School of Law, voting by one’s feet is the concept of moving to a place where your political needs are met. Somin takes it even further and states that feet voting is more powerful than basic ballot-box voting. He cities several other political scholars in his reasoning that ballot-box voting is only guaranteed by an elite. That elite may or may not have the best interests of the populace in mind. This idea is even further enhanced and enabled by the loss of the pre-clearance provision of the Voting Rights Act. However, this paper alerts us to prior laws, regulations, and procedures that allow forces other than the general populace to determine who runs for office, who votes, who is appointed to public office, and what the laws are.

As we have seen in recent years, the political climate in a particular place can vary greatly. With these changes, I have been compiled to revisit my options to become an American expat in America. However, I realize that may not be so practical right now. And for many living in poverty or tied to a job that prevents poverty, moving to a more favorable political climate is not possible. Therefore, they may be stuck with their personal and civic inferiority complexes.

So what can one do in the meantime? Maintain a spirit of self-analysis. If one has the means, then yes, move on to a place where you can be more fruitful. However, I urge that person to be mindful of those less fortunate and contribute as much as you can to bettering your new community and relaying resources back to your old one. Having lived somewhere besides my hometown before has helped me have a clearer and more diverse sense of how one can live. Travel also helps. Walking around DC and New York have helped me see how much different life is for those citizens, but also allowed me to think of ways to help Greensboro.

Above all, shun the appearance of civic inferiority. Vote with your feet, inside or outside your current community.

Cities, Politics of Place, tips for urbanist living

Voting Rights, Civic Duty, and Neighborhoods

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Nearly one week ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The part that was struck down, pre-clearance, required state legislatures in several states across the country, including my own in part, to submit any plans to re-district or reform the voting process to the Justice Department. The idea was to make sure any voter suppression or restriction efforts, such as literacy tests, were not reenacted. Also, districts were drawn to ensure minority, namely black voting turnout. The idea of pre-clearance is not dead. However, the formula is and it is up to Congress to make a new one.

So what does this have to do with neighborhoods? Lots. Follow me and you will see why.

For the record, I want to say that the idea of reducing the ability and ease of voting is wrong. I don’t understand why we have not figured out how to make it EASIER to vote for our political leaders. The online universe is littered with polls. Granted, some of those polls allow you to vote multiple times. Yet others don’t and somehow we can’t bring that technology to the polls that matter the most?

Yet, I feel lawmakers want voting restricted because it favors the populace and not them. However, these lawmakers forget a central tenet: they serve at the pleasure of the people. Or do they? As we have found out, there’s no true constitutional right for the common people to vote for their leaders. At any moment, state legislatures and other local governing bodies could decide to start appointing their leaders and disenfranchise the entire populace.

Another issue with the VRA and the current state of voting is that the rules were becoming a restriction for those it sought to help. It was as if it was not worth trying as a black individual running in a non-VRA district. Similar things happen on the local level in other districts and to other marginalized groups where states have drawn districts to ensure an extreme level of compliance with the VRA. Take a look at North Carolina’s map below. Thanks to a very off interpretation of the VRA, that “snake” district is the only thing that guarantees at least one solid, African-American U.S.House member in this state.

North Carolina Congressional District #12. The VRA in action.

Yet, I want to remind everyone that as a citizen of any place you live and a good community steward, voting is essential. See, this is what has to do with neighborhoods. I took a bit of heat for not including it in my list of things that make one a lazy urbanist. However, to me, being a lazy urbanist allows for a representative democracy, as such we have throughout our country at all levels of government. If one has a crop of good leaders, why vote? Some would also say that we are too large to caucus in many areas. However, we are not too large and shouldn’t be too lazy to vote, find people worthy of serving us in our own communities, and even become that person ourselves. True governing requires door-to-door campaigning and town hall meetings. If neighborhood residents can come together on a regular basis and vote on activities, then why not vote on the leaders and issues that matter to them?

However, it comes down to one thing and one thing only: how to be a good neighbor. There is a Christian scripture that commands us to love our neighbor. If you don’t like the use of scripture, then go to the golden rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which has become a universal ethics code. Being a good neighbor requires that we sometimes lay down our personal differences and the personal mandate we have been given, for the good of others. It requires that we lay down our jealousies, envies, and feelings of being threatened and we allow others the right to exist and live. Sometimes we can’t blast our music loud. Yet, does that mean we can’t paint our house purple? What are we doing that we are allowing residential home values to be what they are such that segregation, competition for home bids, flipping, and other detriments to home values are happening? And back to the main issue at hand, why are we not voting, not allowing potential elected leaders in our homes, or realizing the type of country we are supposed to live in, which allows for liberty AND respect for our fellow people?

I can’t answer that question, but I can say that we have to be better citizens and in turn that creates stronger neighborhoods and communities.