Archive for national politics

Presidential candidates: where’s the urban policy?

February 6, 2008 / Wendy Waters / 10 comments

America’s cities desperately need help — particularly repaired and new transportation infrastructure. Whether in response to bridges collapsing in Minneapolis or congestion-fueled pollution destroying the health of children in Los Angeles, a bold federal policy is necessary.

And yet, in looking through the platforms of the five main contenders for President next year, no one mentioned urban issues. Huckabee is the only one who mentioned infrastructure, although he’s interested in building more Interstate highways (in a plan that sounds almost 1930s new-deal like), and to connect cities rather than supply transportation within them.

Yes, cities fall under local and state level government jurisdiction. But, so does education and aspects of health care, and that isn’t stopping most candidates from weighing in and announcing policies for these other issues.

Because CNN spent a lot of yap time last night talking about how well Obama was doing in cities, I thought he might have some urban issues in his platform. Nope. He has a “rural issues” section, but no area addressing urban issues. Clinton similarly offers a statement about creating rural opportunities and “supporting the family farm.”

McCain’s platform includes the Space Program, but nothing on urban issues. Mitt Romney offers three different fear-based pledges on preventing “jihad” “terrorists” and “keeping Americans safe” (from foreign threats), but nothing on keeping them safe from collapsing urban infrastructure.

Maybe I’m missing something since I live in Canada (but can and do vote in the US, as I’m a dual citizen). Readers — if you’ve found an urban policy in one of the candidates’ platforms, please share them.

This absence of urban issues in the US primary campaigns stands in sharp contrast to recent Canadian federal elections when the two leading political parties (and maybe the NDP and Greens as well) had specific city-oriented “new deal” plans, specifically recognizing that slightly over half of the national GDP is generated in metropolitan areas (and a lot of the other half comes out of the oil sands).

Category: economic development, national politics, transportation /

Suburbia and the American identity

January 30, 2008 / Wendy Waters / One comment

One of the United States’ national identity mythologies is that of a people who forged a country and a culture on the frontier between civilization and nature.

Indeed, in many tales Americans are characterized to embody the best features from a lawless frontier — self reliant, innovative, brave, industrious — along with the desired traits of the civilized world such as educated and respectful of fundamental laws such as the constitution.

By contrast, being too civilized (think derogative references to “the French” and other Europeans) or too barbaric (such as a country hick) have not been favorably portrayed.

The automotive era and the growth of suburbia initially reinforced this American dream. One could be close enough to the city, and yet on the edge, building a community on newly conquered territory. There could be a sense of self reliance out in the ‘burbs and now ex-urbs. With your SUV you don’t need government-run transit systems.  The isolation is, or was, desired for building character.

This attachment to a founding national ideal is one reason why it will be so hard to change this style of housing Americans in favor of something more ecologically sustainable and even economically beneficial, something involving higher density housing.

Category: national politics, resident attitudes, residential development, urban history /

The origins of the Federation of North American City States

January 8, 2008 / Wendy Waters / 15 comments

What could happen if the divide between federal, state and provincial government policy and the needs of metropolitan areas is not resolved soon? How will future historians write about political organization in North America (and the world) during the early 21st century?

Here’s some “social science fiction” – a hypothetical student history paper from the year 2108.

The emergence of the Federated City States of North America in 2027 had roots dating back to the early years of the 21st century.

In the United States elections were fought over distractions and not the real issues facing the country. The war in Iraq, although misguided, tragic and costly was not the biggest threat to the wellbeing of the United States. Nor was terrorism nor abortion rights nor Chinese imports or illegal immigrants from Mexico.

The biggest threats — recognized by many at the time, and also since — were that (1) American citizens and businesses were falling out of sync with the global economy and (2) that the nation’s cities were unsustainable and did not support prosperity as well as those elsewhere in the world. From approximately 2000 onwards, America rapidly became uncompetitive; the dividends from more than a century as a global economic leader were exhausted in a matter of just a few years.

Before we go further some background is required here on what went wrong. America’s 20th century economic strengths had come from its impressive post-secondary education system and ability to be innovative at creating and especially marketing new technology. Open immigration policies in the early 20th century brought motivated, entreprenurial people from around the world to Americas cities. The USA also avoided having international wars fought on its own soil, contributing to a peace and prosperity dividend that lasted several generations.

However, because of its size, the American population and political leaders (and even many academics) tended to view the United States as an isolated “exceptional” island in the world. By the end of the 20th century most of the population either ignored global trends or believed that they didn’t apply to the United States. (Elementary education had also begun to falter such that most Americans could not find other major countries on a map anyway.)

Using fear rather than facts, politicians, the media and others in the early 21st century convinced too many voters that economic survival required the country to close its doors to immigration and to enact barriers to foreign imports — albeit with a few exceptions such as televisions, video game consoles and oil. The latter of which the government subsidized in order to offer voters continued cheap gasoline, which allowed the nation’s political leaders to avoid addressing the need for new styles of urban design as well as transportation systems.

High debts from the growth of government and wars launched during the Bush administration eventually required higher taxes. Public education at all levels saw funding decline. Without immigrants or home grown educated people, innovation fell. Without global competition, and partially because of subsidies, production costs escalated. Soon, the USA wasn’t producing much that anyone else in the world wanted, and global investors became uninterested in the US dollar, dumping them on the market. By 2012 it took $5 US dollars to buy one Euro and the dollar fell to parity with the Chinese Yuan.

City governments meanwhile were trying to offer better services to citizens, in order to create isolated pockets of prosperity. However, replacing the aging road, water, sewer and electrical infrastructure was proving almost impossible. The federal and state governments had no funds to offer and because of trade barriers and protection measures, US cities had to pay twice what those in other countries did for steel, copper, and cement. Without drastically increasing property taxes and/or introducing other levies US cities could not maintain their infrastructure nor improve upon education systems. The few cities — such as Eugene Oregon and Austin Texas — that managed to convince residents and voters that the tax hike was the only way, saw their populations decline drastically.

Meanwhile, infrastructure was decaying and collapsing, everywhere. The most notable events were: the super-earthquake of 2012 that destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge along with numerous highways in the Bay area. A less severe shaker in 2014 took out so much freeway and opened a large fault line such that it split the Seattle metro area in half, with those in Northern suburbs like Redmond and Bellevue virtually unable to reach downtown Seattle by car. A tornado took out two sections of freeway in Dallas in 2013, cutting off the airport . Five Chicago area overpasses simply collapsed in 2014. FEMA collapsed when faced with so many disasters (and decades of mismanagement).

The federal government helped with initial rescue and clean up efforts, but quickly recognized that they could not afford to help rebuild everything and make payments on the debt and continue to fight for oil abroad. Private enterprise helped in some places — it soon cost $50 to cross from Redmond to Seattle on the one repaired section of freeway.

Whether fleeing taxes or escaping from dead infrastructure (or looking for health care), the most talented and hardest working Americans fled — almost one million Americans departed for Canadian cities in 2015 alone (creating both a strain and a tremendous economic boost in Edmonton, Montreal, Toronto, Kitchener, Calgary and Vancouver in particular), and nearly as many departed for other major cities around the world that year. Microsoft moved its global headquarters from Redmond Washington to Vancouver and Richmond BC. American Express went to Toronto from New York. The Bay area also saw an exodous of corporations and their talented workers: Google for example relocated its global headquarters to Kitchener-Waterloo just outside of Toronto, merging with Research in Motion in the process.

Desperate to revitalize their cities, urban political, business and community leaders along with ordinary citizens began proposing solutions.

The Mayor of New York held secret meetings with many of the city’s business and political elite for several years and on July 4, 2016 issued a Declaration of Independence to be voted on in November and take effect January 1, 2018. Although it was uncertain whether the federal government would acknowledge the results, over 80 percent of New Yorkers voted in the referendum and 75% voted in favour of independence.

Bogged down fighting for oil in Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Kazakhstan the government in Washington decided it couldn’t fight a war against Americans as well and allowed New York to separate. The city of New York would now have its citizens income taxes and businesses corporate taxes with which to operate the city. Surrounding areas in Pennsylvania, New Jersey quickly voted to join New York. By 2020 the New York metro area had morphed into an independent country. Los Angeles and San Francisco soon followed, first amalgamating the many city-suburbs into one super-metro region, and then enacting independence in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

Able to control their own immigration policies, these cities immediately invited anyone to come, having lost thousands and even millions of people over the previous decade. They also had no reason to restrict trade as they needed cheaper steel, concrete, and other products to rebuild and move forward. Thousands decided to return, lured by cheap real estate and a chance to come home to the cities in which they grew up. Establishing universal health care coverage was also a lure in convincing many aging generation x’ers and millennials to relocate to their former home towns, or a new one.
Why did Canadian cities do so well initially, and then collapse much later? In Canada in the early 21st century a series of minority parliaments meant that governments had to play to cities’ needs in order to gain the urban vote. Numerous effective band-aid solutions occurred, typically in the form of cash infusions to major cities. Major metro areas improved their transit, air quality, and lifestyle amenities such as parks, recreation and entertainment facilities. The federal early childhood education strategy emerged that offered money but delegated management to metro areas. Public education received further funding, and top global test scores that Canadian students were achieving helped to draw people from around the world who wanted to give their children opportunities. This kept Canada together through 2025 while the US split into city-states.

However once the massive (re-)migration south began in 2020, Canadian cities struggled to compete for talented workers , and the corporations that hired them. Begging for federal dollars and grants to build and maintain infrastructure was highly inefficient in comparison to city-states like San Francisco and New York that could budget and plan based on income and sales taxes.

In 2023 when the former US-cities proposed a new federation agreement, modeled after the European Union and Euro currency system, residents in many Canadian cities saw this as a solution. The Greater Toronto Area, which by this time included much of the Golden Horseshoe–followed the New York model and succeeded from the Canadian federation in 2024, joining the Federation the same year. By 2027 the remaining major metro areas of Canada had followed suit and joined the Federation.

Residents of satellite cities and hinterlands gradually voted to join one city-state or another.

What was remarkable in this period was how fast North American cities were transformed into sustainable entities when unshackled from a slow, conflict ridden federal government.

The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.

- Alexis de Tocqueville in 1840

Category: attracting talent, economic development, national politics, transportation, urban history /

5 noteworthy happenings of 2007 for cities

January 6, 2008 / Wendy Waters / No comments

In no particular order…

1. The bridge collapse in Minneapolis. This tragedy illustrates the crisis in urban infrastructure funding around North America, driven by the fact that higher levels of government control funding to maintain and upgrade the major highways and bridges on which city life depends. The bursting of levies in New Orleans following Katrina, or in Reno this week offer further examples. This issue will be with us for a long time (and I hope will be discussed as an election issue).

2. The growing number of mortgage foreclosures in the United States and the related decline in housing values in many cities. The fact that not every city is experiencing a significant decline in home values is also noteworthy. Not only is the world spiky, but America’s economic fortunes are as well.

3. In the Greater Toronto Area more condominiums were purchased last year than single family houses. This is a profound shift for a metro region that has been struggling with sprawl as well as solid economic and population growth. If Toronto — one of North America’s largest metro areas — can make a shift toward more sustainable urban development, there is hope for many other places. This shift is of course related to the steadily rising price of single family homes. But it shows that rather than move to more distant Barrie or Ancaster, some people are choosing a smaller home.

4. Canadian cities’ infrastructure needs gained attention and funding. The Conference Board of Canada published “Mission Possible” articulating the importance of cities to the national economy (65% of new jobs generated in cities, for example). Subsequently, more federal government funding announcements began to happen in cities like Toronto, Edmonton, and Vancouver.

5. Oil neared a record $100/barrell (and surpassed it early in 2008). Cities run on oil. It’s used to make roads, fuel cars, heat homes and businesses and generate electricity (in some places). Oil also causes a lot of pollution, damaging our local and global environments. Assuming this trend continues into 2008 and beyond, it will begin o impact how people live in cities, and urban policy.

…feel free to add your thoughts on the most lasting developments for cities of 2007:

Category: catastrophe management, ecological issues, economic development, national politics, planning policy, real estate, sprawl, transportation, urban history /

“The Missing Class”

December 19, 2007 / Dave Atkins / 2 comments

Review by guest blogger David Atkins

The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America by Princeton University sociologist Katherine S. Newman and Victor Tan Chen offers a glimpse into the lives of many urban, working Americans who live above the official poverty line, but are not quite middle class.

This book is based on surveys and interviews between 1994-2002 and tells the stories of nine families in the New York City area, organizing those stories around these key issues:

  • gentrification of neighborhoods – some are being priced out of their neighborhoods, but life is safer in the Brooklyn, NY neighborhoods of Sunset Park, Fort Greene, and Clinton Hill. It’s an evolving story that is not all good and not all bad.
  • credit card debt – why and how it gets out of control so quickly. For some, the desperation to escape privation has been a costly temptation.
  • childcare challenges – do welfare moms make better parents and community members than moms who commute hours to a factory job leaving their kids in improvised daycare?
  • health care – one accident can be a ticket back to poverty
  • relationships – the complex web of male/female and extended family arrangments is necessary, practical, and often dysfunctional
  • bureaucracy – near poor people hate welfare as much as the rest of us and would do almost anything to avoid going back.

This is a detailed book; I found it difficult to keep track of who was whom. We meet at least 50 different people in the course of describing the lives of 9 families. I had to draft an outline of the people involved to keep the names and places straight. But what emerges from this book — most relevant to cities– are the following three key recurrent themes:

1. “Near poor” is not a transitional state. Nationally, the “near poor” represent 57 million Americans. We tend to think that poor people who work hard will eventually get ahead and achieve at least some degree of security. But the reality is that those who escape poverty often remain in an economic condition where they are working hard, but cannot advance. In any urban setting, a significant underclass is not on any track to participate in community life beyond working as hard as they can to stay above water. Urban planning these days is often about attracting talent, making cities “cool” to live in for the “creative class” or knowledge workers.

The service class and working class are the people who keep the city running. Understanding, through the anecdotal stories of these families, should help to inform planners why the urban poor and near poor are not just a problem to be dealt with, but human beings who need to be a part of the engine of progress.

2. Child care is a constant problem. The welfare reform efforts of the 1990s succeeded in getting many Americans back to work. Laziness is not a problem among the working poor. Exhaustion is. And their children are constantly in danger of falling back into poverty because of the lack of supervision and involvement from parents who are too busy working to keep the rent paid and food on the table. The near poor are not choosing to let strangers raise their kids in order to pursue a career. There is no choice, only consequence.

3. We need practical, situational solutions, not value-based policies. The stories of how people get into trouble are seldom without some blame. Credit card debt? Why do you have that plasma TV? Single mom with 2 kids and husband deported? Why did you get pregnant again? This book describes with humility and empathy how the real stories of people living and working on the edge are doing their best to survive. The policies of welfare reform in the 1990 succeeded in creating a strong incentive system to get poor people working, but people make mistakes often through lack of information and misinformation. When wealthy people make mistakes, we see it as a learning process. When the near poor make bad decisions, we are quick to judge and apply our own standards about what they should have done and accept their difficulty as the cost of their bad decisions. But a few mistakes can lead to total disaster, especially in the context of children. What is the pregnant, single mom supposed to do to support her family? Take a course in web page design? When? Who takes care of the kids? Life is not fair, OK, we all get that. So what can we do about it?

The central thesis of this book is that we ignore the near poor. They exist in a gap between those in poverty, who we feel an obligation to assist, and those who are “on track” to greater economic stability and prosperity.

Newman identifies some key policy recommendations (and note the forward by Senator John Edwards–this book is intended to provoke political change):

Perhaps most importantly,

“…we must replace this patchwork child-care “system” — a term it barely merits — with a comprehensive, public-supported network of day care (for kids aged six months to three years) and kindergarten (starting at four). We know that the majority of mothers of children under one are in the labor force; no amount of wishful thinking is going to change that fact.”

The most successful and effective policies identified are more projects than policies. There is no magic solution; no single national policy that should be adopted. But by getting into the details of these families, Newman helps us leap over the simplifications and notice the near poor who are a huge segment of our population that is not looking for a handout, but needs some help up.

____________________

This review was contributed by guest blogger, Dave Atkins… a technologist and metro parent who blogs about issues affecting the creative class and their city lifestyle choices, often focusing on Boston where he now lives (after doing some time in the Bay Area and Seattle).

Category: book reviews, national politics, poverty, real estate, urban families, urban history, urban lifestyles /

Brilliant, diverse thoughts on cities

December 18, 2007 / Wendy Waters / No comments

For those of you who haven’t read the Freakonomics Quorum on cities, I highly recommend it.

Five brilliant thinkers on metropolitan growth offer forecasts for the future (James Howard Kunstler, Edward Glaeser, Robert Bruegmann, Dolores Hayden and Alan Berube). Not all of their ideas are mutually compatible, but yet they also seem plausible or reasonable. The ideas are a humbling reminder of how complex cities are and how difficult it is to understand where they are heading.

Here are some of my favorite statements:

From Kunstler:

Categorically, our colossal metroplexes will not be sustainable in a post-oil future — and despite the wishes and yearnings of many people, the truth is that no combination of alternative fuels will permit us to continue living at this scale. Some of our cities will not make it. Phoenix, Tucson, and other Sunbelt cities will dry up and blow away. In Las Vegas, the excitement will be over. Other mega-cities will have to downscale or face extreme dysfunction….The suburbs, for the most part, are toast. They have three possible outcomes in the twenty-first century: as slums, salvage yards, or ruins.

From Glaeser:

The spread of urbanization is, on net, an enormously beneficial process. People in cities are much more economically productive; urban density has been a wellspring of innovation for many millenia. Cities sometimes have a bad reputation because of their association with problems like poverty, pollution, and disease; but this association does not imply causation.

Cities are full of poor people because cities attract poor people, not because cities make people poor.

From Bruegmann:

Of course, this huge outward migration of people [to suburbs and exurbs] has caused problems, just as the migration to the cities did. And public authorities have once again tried to slow or halt the process, now pejoratively called “sprawl,” often with the explicit aim of preserving the distinction between the urban and the rural. This effort is likely to be just as futile as the effort to stop people from moving into the cities, and just as likely to be counterproductive. No one knows what the next chapter of urban history will bring, but if there is any lesson to draw from what has happened to date, it is that abstract ideas about the proper form of settlement, whether urban or rural or hybrids we can’t yet imagine, tend to lag far behind the reality on the ground.

From Hayden:

Since the mid-1930s, the federal government has encouraged green field development on raw land outside of urban centers, usually through tax subsidies rather than direct spending. … Excessive green field growth lies behind the national energy shortage and the mortgage crisis. Using federal incentives to constantly expand urban peripheries with commercial and residential development has had serious consequences. Reliance on imported oil, pursuit of war in the Middle East, and the credit crunch shaking Wall Street suggest that wise patterns of urban land use are more important to economic well-being than many Americans recognize.

From Berube:

The jury is out on whether America can openly accept its urban condition (starting the presidential race in Iowa and New Hampshire, two of our least urban states, doesn’t help). … we ought to begin to tackle critical national challenges — on economic growth, education and skills, infrastructure, and the environment — with a keener eye toward the big, complex, messy, metropolitan way in which the majority of Americans (and now, our global counterparts) live their lives.

So many rich, brilliant ideas on cities — I feel humbled.  I also feel excited to have so many new thoughts and threads to explore on this blog.

Category: ecological issues, national politics, planning policy, residential development, sprawl, urban history /

Car-troplois

December 11, 2007 / Wendy Waters / 6 comments

The North American urban model is intertwined with the history of the automobile.  Mass production reduced costs while rising living standards for the masses in the 1950s and 1960s further increased automobile affordability.   At the same time, interstate highways–designed to allow quick movement of military and civilians in the event of war–allowed families to sprawl into the suburbs and the income earner to commute back to the city.  Mass produced houses helped make this lifestyle affordable as well.

American life became dependent not only  on the automobile but on oil as well — and not only for gasoline.  Building the thousands of miles of highways and roads required oil as a main ingredient.

Last week Ryan Avent on his Bellows blog commented on a recent discussion about what vehicle is the most eco-friendly.  Others had argued either for the Toyota Prius, an expensive gas-electric hybrid, or for the much cheaper and highly fuel efficient Corolla, putting the savings into other ecological upgrades for your home (more efficient furnaces, lighting,  etc.).

Avent suggested people consider “door number four” – no car, instead adopting a different lifestyle.

But maybe there’s yet another option! What if, instead of spending all that money on a car, you instead put it into buying or renting a home near transit.

And Avent was not blindly advocating everyone give up their cars, instead suggesting the whole auto-based paradigm needs a re-think.

Obviously, many people are going to continue to drive or have no choice but to drive….We really ought to be focusing, however, on the way that the structure of our urban areas and urban infrastructure perpetuates a costly dependence on automobiles.

His post got me thinking.  Who benefits from our current urban design complete with its automobile-focused transportation method?  The automotive and oil companies, of course.

There’s probably a good comic-tragic “conspiracy” movie in all this a la Michael Moore.  The automotive and oil industries are profitable and involve millions of jobs directly and indirectly.  They and their suppliers (including some workers groups, perhaps) may not wish to see society move away from the oil economy.  Therefore, as society gets more concerned about the combustion economy, they introduce minor improvements like a hybrid car along with great volumes of talk about their “ecologically-minded” research.  But you still need to drive on roads, and use (albeit smaller amounts) some petroleum fuel.

The auto companies could also produce pure electric cars, or hydrogen cars, or super-fuel-efficient cars but there isn’t the demand and/or infrastructure and/or regulations in North America to make some of these possible.  Experts say the technology exists to create mass-produced, affordable alternative vehicles.

By talking a lot about their future ecologically sensitive cars (while at the same time releasing ridiculous-sized SUVs), the auto companies may be finding ways to prevent voters and governments from really thinking about the viability of an automotive culture and enacting corresponding legislative and lifestyle changes.

The movie would probably end with an Al-Gore graph showing emissions rising set against polar ice melting and a cute polar bear dying from the loss of her habitat.  A tragedy that we cannot seem to avoid despite knowing it’s coming (in classical greek style).

In the non-cinematic version of the story, there is going to be some social and economic upheaval but I think some new government regulations and policy combined with market forces will gradually make North America’s cities more people-tropoli rather than car-troploli.  More on how I predict this could happen in a subsequent post.

Category: ecological issues, national politics, sprawl, transportation, urban history /

Wikinomics – 5 implications for cities

November 28, 2007 / Dave Atkins / 3 comments

By guest blogger, Dave Atkins…

Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams’ book Wikinomics is not a book about cities. However, the social changes it describes will have profound effects on cities because they impact how we live and work as well as how businesses perform. Here are five potential implications of the “wiki effect” on cities:

1) The “global plant floor” – distributed manufacturing—will create opportunity for smaller cities and regions. Manufacturers like Boeing are recognizing the value of collaboration and are opening up their design and manufacturing processes to take advantage of global talent. In some cases, this means parts are cheaper to make offshore, but it also creates opportunities in particular cities where entrepreneurs with teams of knowledge workers can seize the opportunity to create component solutions. The key implication for cities and economic development is that it’s no longer about attracting a huge factory to town–it’s more about helping entrepreneurs find their role to play–as part of a globally distributed operation.

2) The “wiki workplace” will connect teams of knowledge workers in different cities. This will allow teams in smaller and satellite cities to connect with larger organizations and projects. Tapscott relates a story of how the President of Best Buy’s “Geek Squad” was concerned that his 20 tech support agents in Anchorage were in danger of being isolated. His director said not to worry, “I talk to them all the time.” The agents were playing Massively Multiplayer Online Games—and in the course of their gaming, talking about work. Even without (or perhaps in spite of) top-level direction, workers find ways to use technology to build connections across geography. In the case of Geek Squad, this allows the small Anchorage team to be a part of the national Best Buy organization, where agents can help each other out informally and share knowledge so agents in smaller cities are not at an information disadvantage to their counterparts in more tech-heavy big cities.

3)“Platforms for participation” will strengthen local action, empowering citizens in smaller cities and towns. A platform is an enabling technology that other users can employ to build a shared application. For example the Google Maps API gives users a platform upon which they can build “mashups’—maps that integrate data from other sources and map the data in interesting ways. Housingmaps.com pulls real estate listings from craigslist and displays the location of the properties on a map. The developer of the website put two existing technologies together to create something new and valuable. In my case, over the weekend, I used the open source community platform software drupal to create a blog for my town. But technology is only half of the equation–you still need a critical mass of local people who find the resulting application relevant and useful. These kinds of participation platforms can be catalysts for local involvement and activism.

4) The city will be an “ideagora” anchor. Tapscott describes how websites that allow people to post problems and solutions are creating “Ideagoras”—marketplaces of ideas. These Ideagoras will allow geographically diverse workers to collaborate outside corporate walls. But it doesn’t work in isolation. People are members of teams, working in companies, but they develop connections outside the company where they trade ideas—sometimes for money, sometimes for fun. This is part of an evolving workplace where knowledge workers are increasingly blending their work and life by pursing their passions. But to do that, in addition to collaboration technology, you need a community of opportunity–real world interactions that inspire you to think of ways to contribute your talents and help you learn. For that, you need a critical mass of people–a city.

5) Young urban people provide the locus of change. Tapscott identifies “Millennials” or “Gen Y” as the “Net Gen.” They grew up with these technologies and are predisposed toward collaboration. Young people are part of the “perfect storm” of change that is going to revolutionize the workplace. The differing generational perspective favors collaboration in cities–example: many people of my generation (X) have long been excited about telecommuting–and the idea that you could line up a well-paying tech job, then do it from a nice, rural location. We did crazy stuff like buy condos 40 miles from the city and then commute for hours, balancing it out by telecommuting a few days a week. But a more typical experience I have with younger workers is that they have their laptop in their messenger bag, or are carrying a Blackberry while they hang out with their friends in the city. They might have lots of side projects going on while they stay connected to work. The new dream is to be able to quickly fix a work problem remotely from a party and then get back to the party, not to work in a bunker in the burbs.

This review was contributed by guest blogger, Dave Atkins… a technologist and urban parent who blogs about issues affecting the creative class and their city lifestyle choices, often focusing on Boston where he now lives (after doing some time in the Bay area).

He has previously blogged about Wikinomics and Wikis:

Where does talk stop and action begin?

Can Wikis help us make a better world?

Wikipolitic

Category: book reviews, economic development, national politics /

Rapid transit and democracy

November 20, 2007 / Wendy Waters / 5 comments

As Winston Churchill said, “Democracy is the worst system in the world, save all the others.” However, he wasn’t trying to get a new metro system built.

As many US cities may be proving, there can be too much of a good thing — voters keep vetoing bills to build or expand transit systems and roads. As a result cities and their economies are becoming stifled by congestion and pollution with no solutions in sight.

Seattle and Milwaukee are two recent nay-saying regions. Some Los Angelinos are also fighting a light rail system on the basis that people might get hit by trains (whereas apparently the existing vehicular traffic is not seen as a threat).

One problem, of course, is no one wants to vote for new taxes. Another problem is that many of these bills contain a variety of projects – transit and road construction packaged together — such that it’s easy to find a reason to vote no.

In Vancouver, by contrast, elected politicians made a decision to build a new metro line; they claim sufficient funds exist (so lets hope they’re right), and construction is now half done. One could argue this is undemocratic because citizens didn’t get to vote on it. On the other hand, a metro line is being built that the city desperately needs. Now that the other two lines exist, few people argue that they are a bad thing.

In Toronto, new subway lines are under construction, and again, it was the elected politicians who made the decision and found the money. It should be noted that in both cities, significant federal government funding is helping the projects to proceed.

Many people in Toronto and Vancouver continue to protest the transit expansions currently underway — whether because they dislike the destinations (feeling other routes should have come first) or the specific route and locations of stations or the construction mess and mayhem.

But perhaps the only thing worse than not having much of a say, is giving the electorate a direct say. If that happened, Toronto and Vancouver metro areas might not be building the transit infrastructure required to support growing populations.

Category: development conflicts, national politics, planning policy, resident attitudes, sprawl, transportation /

El Paso and federal policy

October 30, 2007 / Wendy Waters / 2 comments

The governments, citizens and businesses of many cities around the world struggle against the policies and practices of higher levels of government. As I’ve written before, laws, taxes and philosophies often hamper city development and the everyday lives of citizens.

Some cities’ citizens and businesses have roots and daily lives connected to more than one country. Detroit and Windsor would be one example. But perhaps the most bi-national North American city is El-Paso / Ciudad Juarez. Many residents of the area have dual citizenship. They often commute across the border on a daily basis — that same border that is seeing travel impeded by growing levels of red tape in the name of national security.

The New York Times has a great article this week about El Paso (found via Planetizen). Here’s my favorite selection:

… [housing] demand was especially strong for Mexicans who own businesses in El Paso and live in Juárez.

But for dual citizens like Ms. Giner, which side of the border she lives on is a matter of personal choice. “Crossing the border is a normal part of life for us,” she said. “I want my kids to be bilingual and bicultural. It’s important for me that they know the Mexican holidays and culture, not just the language.” Her daughters Cassandra, 9, and Isabella, 4, go to a private Catholic school in Juárez while her youngest daughter, Sofia, 2, who has a rare genetic disorder, receives special care in El Paso.

The Giners have taken advantage of Mexico’s dual nationality law instituted in 1998. (Mexicans living in the United States, along with their American-born children, could acquire or reacquire rights as Mexican citizens.) Until recently, the family lived in Juárez and Ms. Giner commuted to her previous job in El Paso.

But after her husband sold their business, a restaurant in Juárez, and opened a new one in El Paso, they moved across the border to the lush Upper Valley neighborhood of El Paso. Three years ago they bought a 4,000-square-foot four-bedroom house for $250,000.

Policy made in Washington DC (often to score political points in places distant from El Paso) hardly seems relevant to the lives of everyday citizens and their businesses in this city. In fact, the whole region could suffer if the federal government succeeds in restricting the flow of people and goods across the border.

Category: communities, economic development, national politics /
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