Planning Quote of the Day

alert us to early warning signs

"In January, the Council approved a proposal ... to redevelop Allied Drive. Crime there is down by half since the City acted on my initiative to buy 20% of the housing there. Now we’re starting to see millions of dollars of private reinvestment there, which was exactly what we intended when we bought the property ...

But we are also attempting to do two things that have not been tried much anywhere in America: we are trying to improve Allied Drive without driving out low-income working families and we are trying not to simply force problems into other neighborhoods.

Along those lines, we are working on [an] initiative to develop the Neighborhood Indicators pilot project. Inspired by a program in Charlotte, North Carolina, this is a set of statistics that is designed alert us to early warning signs of stress in a neighborhood. Armed with that knowledge we can go to these neighborhoods and ... attack a problem before it gets out of hand."

-- from State of the City Address, by Madison (Wisconsin) Mayor Dave Cielewicz (April 9, 2008)

independence and dignity

"... it has taken us nearly four years to foreclose on thousands of abandoned properties, demolish over two thousand dangerous buildings, and upgrade the infrastructure in our most neglected neighborhoods. ... Now I am asking all homebuilders of Houston to help us build new housing on over seven hundred lots that will be made available at submarket prices, with generous down payment assistance programs, so that many working people can obtain the independence and dignity of owning their own house. The City will work in parallel to continue to build community-based organizations where new homes are built. The whole city will be safer as working families move into neighborhoods which too often had become magnets for crime."

-- From Houston, Texas, Mayor Bill White's State of the City Address (Jan. 25, 2008)

the most challenging aspect of smart growth

"Directing growth and investment back into existing communities without displacing lower-income residents is the most challenging aspect of smart growth. But the alternative – sprawl – has not been great for communities of color and lower income families, either. Unmanaged growth has contributed to: racial and economic segregation; a spatial mismatch between workers in older urban neighborhoods and rural communities and suburban job centers; a draining of investment from older communities; and exclusionary housing practices that bar the poor and people of color from suburbs. Smart growth policies have the potential to reverse these trends. If done inclusively, with the involvement and guidance of neighborhood  residents and community-based organizations from the start."

-- Leah Kalinosky, from "Does Smart Growth = Equitable Growth," in Planning Commissioners Journal #45 (Winter 2002).

Note: Kalinosky's article is also included in our just released publication, Taking a Closer Look: Smart Growth (available as our March special offer).

only in reruns of old sitcoms

"One person living alone (single, widowed, or divorced) represents the predominant household type in suburban areas today. The suburban male breadwinner family with a stay-at-home mom and two children living in a peaceful three-bedroom colonial with a leafy yard predominates only in reruns of old sitcoms."

-- Dolores Hayden, from "How Should We Be Thinking About Urbanization?" (NY Times Freakonomics blog (December 11, 2007).

Note: Hayden is a professor of architecture and author of Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth (among other books).

the density of alcohol outlets

"The density of alcohol outlets correlates with density of physical assaults and is closely related to crime and violence. Alcohol slows reaction time and its use by pedestrians and drivers contributes to traffic injuries. ... Liquor stores are concentrated in low-income neighborhoods."

-- from a background research report for the new "health element" of the City of Richmond, California's general plan.

Note: for more about the fascinating work Richmond, California, has done in developing a health element for its general plan, see today's post, Here's to Your Health, on our PlannersWeb blog.

the irony of gentrification

"The irony of gentrification, though, is that while the seeders drive the cycle, they plant the seeds of their own obsolescence. They arrive to be eventually driven out."

-- from "The Embers of Gentrification," by Adam Sternbergh, in New York Magazine (available online)

Note: this is a fascinating article about how the cycle of gentrification has played out in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn.

in a town of 500 people

"Cities are funny things. The bigger they are and the more people in them, the less social people seem to be. ... Growing up in a small town often comes with the experience of being familiar with the vast majority of the population. In a town of 500 people, one has a high probability of knowing everyone on their block. Living in a downtown condo, one housing 200 or so people, one has a high probability of knowing not one of the people living in the same building." 

-- from We Are Community blog posting (Nov. 15, 2007)

new waves of artists

In a lot of cases we're seeing the arts being used as a blunt instrument to jump start economic development in "blighted" neighborhoods. ... New waves of artists entering underdeveloped urban neighborhoods often encounter suspicion and sometimes meet outright hostility from the folks who've lived there for generations. The established residents (rightly) fear that rapid increases in property values (and therefore rents) will closely follow the artists' arrival. It doesn't help matters that, more often than not, the newcomer artists are mostly white, and the existing residents mostly not. If you're going to explicitly employ strategies to radically alter the texture and economics of a neighborhood, you simply have to pay some attention to who's already living there."

-- Adam Huttler, from Zen and the Art of Urban Planning on Adam the Hutt blog (Sept. 20, 2007)

seeking the four-bit room

"In popular culture we could ... see the old mansion divided up into apartments as something cool and modern. The perfect place for a single gal at age 30: Mary Richards. Mary Tyler Moore’s character lived in a former mansion turned apartments. Cloris Leachman played Moore’s landlady — at least the building was owner occupied, right? Some rooming houses still exist but they are very hard to find. ... Getting permission to rehab an existing rooming house is not likely given today’s climate of people only wanting neighbors just like themselves. Today few choices exist for those seeking the four-bit room.

We need to increase our housing options for the working poor. This doesn’t mean a hand out, just not forcing out viable choices via zoning or other methods. To me it is in our best interests to catch people with such housing on the way down — a far better way to solve the problem than pulling them up from park benches after several years on the streets."

-- Steve Patterson, posted on Urban Review STL blog