Archive for May 31, 2008

The “Pocket book point”

May 31, 2008 / Wendy Waters / No comments

Great editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer regarding gradual changes happening in America as gasoline prices rise.  John Timpane notes that transit ridership is gradually increasing and attitudes are slowly changing away from exurban sprawl and toward “elegant density.”

So, no, we haven’t reached the tipping point – we’ve reached a pocketbook point. When things really tip, we’ll discover – gasp – we don’t have enough trains and buses for those who need them.

He but doesn’t place blame on the choices to build a national cultural around the automobile.  But laments the costs:

How, then, can I say that car culture doesn’t work? Because the cost to individual and communal life, and to the environment, has been too high. And the bill is just now coming due.

As I’ve suggested before, he believes a full scale change to American life may be a ways off because of the deep investments in infrastructure.  But he seems convinced that it is coming, however not without a critical transit shortage and crisis.

Category: "back to the center", ecological issues, planning policy, sprawl, transportation, urban history /

Have stadium, will travel

May 28, 2008 / Wendy Waters / One comment

Apparently it will be possible to dismantle the stadium being designed for the 2012 London Olympic Games in order to move it elsewhere.   Bldgblog reports that the city of Chicago may end up with the edifice.

This all reminds me of the old Expo 86 structures, seats and other World’s Fair leftovers.  The idea was to share the wealth — so to speak — around the province of British Columbia.  Some cast offs continue to provide pride or purpose — such as the world’s largest ice hockey stick now in Duncan BC or the Inukshuk that remains in Vancouver.

But others serve as a reminder that some new investment in public infrastructure may be well overdue.  During a walk on a suburban beach recently we saw some of the iconic Expo seats, now rusting missing bolts and otherwise desperately in need of repair and paint.   You can find these all over the province along with the ugly exo-skeleton pavilion buildings which for a time became the new Atco trailers.

And BC Place Stadium has been a white elephant ever since the fair for which it was built.  Rarely has a sporting team in Vancouver been able to sell 60,000 seats (well the Canucks could, but BC place is for Football or Soccer, not ice hockey).  The roof structure is starting to fail.  There are now plans to revive and renovate it — after the 2010 Olympics which will in fact make use of it as Olympic Stadium.

Thinking back 22 years, it might have been more practical to have done the London plan — a temporary stadium that could have been moved to a city that needed such a large one.

Category: planning policy, public spaces, urban history /

Innovation, spiky-ness and poverty

May 27, 2008 / Wendy Waters / No comments

 In Who’s Your City, Richard Florida notes that economic spikes and valleys are becoming ever more pronounced.

What I found most intriguing, and simultaneously worrying, is his finding that the most innovative centers in the United States — Silicon Valley, Boston and the Research Triangle — also contain the USA’s “highest levels of inequality.”

Is poverty a necessary bi-product of good wealth-generation opportunity?

Florida focuses on those cities generating the most opportunity for creative, innovative people — the engine of 21st century economic growth.  These places attract well educated “knowledge” workers, but also a variety of others with different skills from construction to retail sales (and some with arguably more limited skills just hoping for a break).

This sounds remarkably similar to a gold rush town of yester-year.  Thousands flocked to places like San Francisco or Dawson City in the 19th century.  Only the talented, the connected and the lucky made any wealth.  They lived like kings.  Everyone else tried to scrape together a living anyway they could — or begged, or died from disease or the cold.

So maybe the historical lesson is that poverty will always follow wealth creation opportunity.

For modern cities, what should society do about this?   If you want opportunity, do you have to accept that some won’t be able to take advantage of it?  Put another way, do you accept that there will be definite winners and losers?

Would accepting this help city planners and economic development types along with social activists to better prepare to help those who don’t succeed.

As Florida says:

Managing the disparities between peaks and valleys worldwide — raising the valleys without sacrificing the peaks — is surely the greatest political challenge of our time.

I also wonder if such knowledge might help some of Florida’s readers choose their city?  If you don’t want to see great disparity between rich and poor, perhaps finding a place less dynamic might be for you?

Category: economic development, national politics, planning policy, poverty, urban history /

4 ways to read “Who’s Your City”

May 23, 2008 / Wendy Waters / One comment

Richard Florida, Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life.

Where you choose to live may be the most important decision in your adult life — at least according to Economist Richard Florida. And he makes a compelling case for it in his latest book. Your choice of city will shape who your friends are, who you marry and your career possibilities. More people have the means to be mobile than ever before in human history, with profound implications for the 21st century.

Therefore, the book’s content will interest a wide range of people from urban economic development specialists to college students with their futures ahead of them to people who simply want to understand better the relationship between urban development and the world and US economies.

Rather than write a standard book review, I thought I’d offer some thoughts on how four different groups could read and benefit from the knowledge in Who’s Your City.

1. Newer Urban Studies students (graduate or under graduate level or self-taught).
The book offers a valuable background on scholarship and theories about cities. The first half of the book (or so) centres around explaining why and how the world is spiky, refuting Thomas L. Friedman’s assertion that is is flat. The highest levels of economic growth and development is concentrating in cities, and certain cities are experiencing much faster economic prosperity expansion than others.

The power of clustering is a key reason why and through several chapters Florida “unpacks” clustering, explaining in detail the multifaceted aspects of this phenomenon. Who’s Your City offers a good foundation on which to build a knowledge of how cities work.

2. Seasoned urbanologists – aka knowledgable city buffs – In addition to the details on how clusters work, Florida offers a new approach to understanding cities that is intriguing. Examining clustering in detail led him to wonder whether certain cities and mega regions tend to attract more of particular personality types. He investigated and it appears that indeed they do. For example, extroverted people gravitate toward Chicago and other cities in a swatch heading southward including St. Louis, Memphis and Atlanta. Neurotic people cluster very heavily in New York. Open to experience people cluster in California and Cascadia, among other places.

As a result, you could say that cities have personalities. Florida suggests that people may be happiest if they find a city that matches their own personality because this means they’ll find more like minded people. Something young people looking for their city-mate might want to keep in mind.

3. College juniors and seniors as well as young people generally who will soon face a location choice. Often it seems Florida is talking directly to this group — particularly in later chapters although throughout the book are sections that read like college lectures, perhaps where he field-tested the material before publication.

In the final chapter, Florida offers a series of questions and steps that people should follow in order to find good potential urban matches. He suggests people consider everything from the quality of the airport to traffic congestion, schools, entertainment, energy level, crime rates and ease of networking.

While he recommended people visit potential city-matches, I was disappointed that he didn’t suggest “test driving” a city. While still in college people have good avenues for doing this such as doing a semester exchange to another school in a potential match city, or finding a summer job or internship in a different city.

4. Planners and economic development specialists.
Florida points out that cities are increasingly finding themselves competing for talented people. The skilled are attracted to a combination of urban amenities and productivity in their field, not all of it within the control of civic officials.

Some cities appeal more to certain demographic groups than others. Florida divides them into young singles, young families and empty nesters and offers analysis as to which cities best fit people at these life stages. Some cities — such as San Francisco — perform better for wider ranges of people than other places, and intriguingly this often correlates to high innovation rates. An obvious conclusion the reader can draw is that making cities accessable to people at all stages of their lives is important. HOwever, Florida focuses on his strength of pointing out trends and leaves it to policy makers to decide how to handle this information.

One key finding that is a dangling thread in this book is that places with highest levels of innovation also seem to have highest levels of prosperity, but also poverty. As Florida states, this may be one of the greatest political and social challenges to come in the 21st century.

****

This book has something for everyone. This leads to my main critique: it doesn’t have one strong thread tying everything together — it often seems like a series of essays — fascinating ones, but not always connected ones.

The book’s main purpose appears to be the message that place matters. And yes, Florida illustrates that. But somehow the early chapters on the growing importance of clusters and the rise of mega regions don’talways seem connected to the later chapters on personality as well as “where we live now?” and Place yourself. This all may be because we hear two different voices from Richard Florida. One, the analytical academic — particularly in the earlier chapters that may have been stand alone articles previously — the other a friendly, casual tone that offers some personal, autobiographical content. Both styles are enjoyable reads, just sometimes seem forced in this book.

This is a minor quibble. Florida offers a highly accessible analysis of how cities and megaregions work, including new perspectives including the notion that cities have personalities.

Category: attracting talent, book reviews, clusters, economic development, urban history /

Soaring gasoline prices not a threat to American suburbia

May 20, 2008 / Wendy Waters / 6 comments

As much as I’d like to see differently, higher gasoline prices are not going to change the way American metropolitan areas are organized — at least not for a long time. Here are two reasons why not:

1. Gasoline prices in the US are only now reaching levels that were “normal” for many years in other parts of the world. And in many of those places (think Canada, Australia, etc.) people still drove a lot and suburban living was popular. The main difference was they used smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles.

Already sales of the big SUVs are down so much that manufacturing of them has nearly halted.

2. There is too much invested in the current system culturally, economically, politically and physically (the infrastructure).

The automobile culture with great shopping malls and power centres is a way of life for millions. The American economy revolves around automobile based consumerism as well as around suburban business parks as employment centres. Politically, the suburbs have clout; even if the population declines relative to inner cities it will take a while for the political weight to catch up. Finally, the billions or trillions collectively invested in road infrastructure invites motor vehicle travel.

***

All this said, I do think that other forces are also challenging the suburban way of life. Everything from climate change concerns to a renewed interest in living close to places of work, entertainment and shopping to a desire to have more free time are pushing people to re-think whether they need a large suburban house. Gasoline prices are also one small factor in this equation for many people.

But, for those who want to live the suburban, automobile oriented lifestyle — and there will be millions in this category — there will continue to be affordable options. More fuel efficient vehicles will be available. The burst housing bubble will generate less expensive houses and mortgages. Suburban families may choose to save money elsewhere — eat out less, skip the movies, etc. (The “latte factor” will be less influential if there isn’t a latte nearby.)

While I’d like to see differently, gasoline prices have a long ways to rise before it will challenge the American suburban “way of life.”

Category: ecological issues, resident attitudes, sprawl, transportation /

Old and New Third Places

May 13, 2008 / Wendy Waters / 5 comments

The Economist had a special feature on mobile technology, nomadic workers, and what both mean to urban society.  One observation the writers made was that these mobile technologies often connect us to familiar people far away, but create a barrier toward connecting to strangers sitting beside us.

One example used was Third Places — coffee shops, downtown plazas, etc. where mobile workers sometimes hang out to work, rather than be stuck in an office.   Many of these places used to foster communication.  Historically, many revolutionary movements (whether political, philosophical or artistic) were forged in coffee houses throughout the world.  People gathered, consumed too much caffeine, and generated new inspiring ideas.  Today, the Economist authors and sources noted, people in third places often don’t talk to each other:

James Katz at Rutgers fears that cyber-nomads are “hollowing [third places] out”.  It is becoming common place for a cafe to be full of people with headphones on, speaking to their mobile phones or laptops and hacking away at their keyboards, more engaged with their e-mail in box than with the people touching their elbows.  These places are “physically inhabited but psychologically evacuated,” says Mr. Katz, which leaves people feeling “more isolated than they would be if the cafe were merely empty.”

Yesterday I was walking down a street in Vancouver known for its coffee houses.  Some of them have been around for decades, run by Italian or Portuguese immigrant families.  Others opened more recently.   Almost all now offer wireless internet access.   However, the older cafes had more people hanging out and talking.  At my favorite stop, an Italian-run haunt that opened in the 1970s, I saw three people huddled around one laptop screen, discussing something.  A couple each with a computer sat at another table and worked and chatted in a multi-tasking kind of way.  Most chatting people did not have mobile devices with them.  But they were interspersed around the cafe with the computer people.  Most people stopped to look and smile when the Barrista starting flirting with my giggly 8 month old baby.

I took my coffee to go and continued on our walk.  As I passed newer coffee places, I noticed what the Economist writers observed.  Everyone inside seemed detached from the cafe, in their own worlds wearing headphones and faces pressed against a computer screen.  Had I wandered into these places with a baby, I had the feeling that everyone would have stiffened up, worried that the baby would make noise and disturb their detachment from the world.

There are two types of Third Places, it seems.  Ones that foster some sort of human interaction.   And those that really function as office space, with people “virtually” closing the door with their headphones and computer screens.

Category: third places, urban lifestyles /

Blaming fast food outlet proximity for obesity

May 5, 2008 / Wendy Waters / 5 comments

According to a UCLA study (found via Planetizen):

Higher rates of diabetes and obesity occur in neighborhoods — regardless of the residents’ income, race or ethnicity — where fast-food restaurants and convenience stores greatly outnumber grocery stores and produce vendors, according to a statewide study released today.

But is this correlation the same thing as saying that fast food outlet proximity causes obesity?

Or, could we say instead that communities with high numbers of obese people attract fast food restaurants?

Actually the study offers two intriguing countermeasures regardless of causality.  Requiring fast food restaurants to post calorie and fat content information is one, which is fairly obvious and not directly about cities.

The other suggestion is for cities to look at zoning restrictions.  That is, use city bylaws to limit the spread of fast food.

While I’m not sure this is that feasible, the broader point is worth pondering.  I would ask: In what ways do city development guidelines and urban infrastructure support fast food outlets at the expense of green grocery stores and other types of food vending.

For example, consider the size of commercial spaces.  In some older urban neighborhoods, store fronts are small and each 25 foot space (or less) is often separately owned by a different family.  This structure tends to support small family run cafes, delis, grocery stores etc.  In newer neighborhoods the average retail space is huge — the only business that can afford it is a big chain grocery store (meaning a neighborhood would only have one grocer instead of many) or a fast food chain.

Also, the study did not examine walkability, which is also related to urban structure.  Are there sidewalks?  Does the city allow and support commercial zones within walking distance to most people?   From this study’s results, one could surmise that the neighborhoods with more grocery stores than fast food outlets are also more walkable than the others.

Category: communities, demographic stats, planning policy, urban lifestyles, urban retail trends /

Jane’s Walk

May 1, 2008 / Wendy Waters / 4 comments

This weekend in nine Canadian cities and two American ones, volunteer neighborhood residents are offering guided tours of their communities to the public in a national celebration of the late Jane Jacobs and of cities.

As Jacobs said, to understand cities and to know what will work, “you’ve got to get out and walk.”

Some tour guides are well known local urban activists or afficionados (like Ned Jacobs [son of Jane] or Gordon Price).  But anyone can offer a tour.  Because the guides are varied, the topics and agendas vary too.  Some are offering insights into hot political issues like homelessness.  Others are more historic or architectural.  Had I heard about it before this week (a hazard of vacationing) I probably would have considered giving one.  Maybe next year if the event happens again.

So, if you live in or can visit Vancouver, Winnipeg, Calgary, Toronto, Guelph, Charlottetown, Halifax, Thornbury-Clarkson (Ont), or Ottawa in Canada, or Salt Lake City in the USA, consider joining in.  You need to sign up in advance.

Category: communities, public spaces /