A Planner's reality: Segregation in America

Salon.com recently posted a great slideshow of the most segregated cities in America. The post had a map of the racial breakdown of each city as well as an explanation of the history of segregation in each city. Check out the slideshow in this link.

What's interesting is that even in some of the most segregated cities, there is a new trend of young affluent white suburbanites moving into back into the core of cities and working class and middle class city black populations moving into inner-rung suburbs. While this new trend is causing some existing places to become more diverse as one population slides into a new neighborhood as the group is leaving, what's fascinating is that the new trend is still reinforcing the old trend of segregation. The shifts in population among races are not quite coexisting with each other as they are displacing one another.

And this displacement is causing a lot of ugly fights between new and existing populations throughout urban America. In Philadelphia and Washington D.C., historically black neighborhoods are trying to protect their community's identity from white and now black gentrifiers and in suburban Detroit, elite black suburbs or worried about the waves of working class blacks from inner-city Detroit moving into their communities.

These new tensions are now issues that planners now have to listen to and address. These tensions are no longer just a sensitive issue for the inner-city but now affect suburban planners as well. In my jurisdiction, my office worked on an historic black community (historic in culture but not in the building preservation sense) that began as a segregated community and had faced decades of discrimination. Their struggles in overcoming these obstacles helped cement the community's identity and it was very important that we preserve and honor that community's history. But from a strictly planning sense, none of their history of segregation was going to greatly affect how we planned and designed their future housing developments and open spaces. We could not ignore their history but we could not plan around their history either without a historical landmark or building. There was a disconnect between the community and the planners. To the community, their history was the number one concern. For the planners, designing safe spaces was our number one concern.

This disconnect between preserving the people's history in a community over the preservation of buildings is one of city planning's biggest challenges and up to now one of it's biggest failures. As a whole, city planners do not know how to at least help a community on the wrong side of gentrification. As city planners we almost always side with the gentrifiers because our number one goal is to create better designed spaces and buildings. The influx of gentrification helps remove and redevelop empty debris filled lots, rehabilitates vacant buildings and brings commercial vitality back into neighborhoods. Who wouldn't want that?

Newcomers into gentrified inner-city neighborhoods are often dismayed when they find out that it is the existing long term residents who do not want the positive changes of gentrification. The standard answer for newcomers to existing long-term residents is that they should be thanking them for improving their neighborhoods. The issue for long-term residents is not that they want to live in sub-standard conditions but they are seeking a permanent stake in their community in which they felt they established. Whether that neighborhood is an affluent community or a poor community, long term residents feel that it is their neighborhood in large part because of the history of segregation. A lot of older black inner-city neighborhoods were purposefully segregated and became the only neighborhoods blacks could live in within a metropolitan region.

Despite their struggles these older black communities formed identities that were important not only to the psyche of blacks that lived in that community but to urban black America as a whole...for that time. Over time, these communities have often lost their identities as segregation slowly ended and middle class blacks moved out, leaving some of the working class blacks who couldn't afford to leave feel abandoned. But even with all that said there is still some high reverence for some of these communities no matter how poverty stricken or crime riddled they have become. While saying you are from Harlem or the Southside of Chicago or the 9th Ward of New Orleans may be looked down upon by some, for some in urban black America it is still a source of pride.

And this source of pride, which is wrapped around decades of segregation, self-empowerment, decline and then decades of poverty is what gentrification threatens to end. These communities have seen the life cycles of the black community within those cities and while they may be dying, those that still live in those communities do not want to see it end. So how do we as planners preserve that sense of pride? We all know that cities and neighborhoods go through changes, death and rebirth. Do we interfere with the natural life cycle of neighborhoods? Or is it important to maintain the cultural identity of a place like Harlem from becoming just another nice gentrified neighborhood?

What are your thoughts? Thanks for reading!

The HIDMO - Gentrification in Seattle's Central District

This is a 10 minute documentary on the gentrification of Seattle's Central District. This video focuses on the recent targetting of the Hidmo Eritrean Cuisine restaurant.

Seattle's Central District

This is a video made for a research project about the Central District of Seattle based on the music video and lyrics for "Home" by Jake One featuri...

This video was made solely for educational purposes with all sources properly cited and given credit.

The streets of Seattle

Jake One - Home feat. Vitamin D, Note, Maneak B and Ish

Graffiti Chile: Grin

Grin, a Chilean artist who has been active for more than a decade. Grin combines his passion for graffiti with another urban discipline: architecture. He practices both in enormous murals that play with depth and texture, and sometimes they merge with the structure of the building itself:

Photos by: KELP (www.kelp.cl)

2PAC - To Live and Die in L.A

INVISIBLE CITY

In the inner-city housing project of Toronto's Regent Park, Kendell and Mikey, like their surroundings are in the process of transformation; the environment and social pressure tempting them to make poor choices, their mothers and mentors rooting for them to succeed.

Turning his camera on the often ignored inner city, Academy-award nominated director Hubert Davis sensitively depicts the disconnection of urban poverty and race from the mainstream.

PLAYING AT HOTDOCS 2009 : http://www.hotdocs.ca

The Heart of Downtown Port Au Prince, Haiti

Before the January 2010 Earthquake

"This Is Not Normal" - Brick City principal speaks to students after shooting

Please check out the whole "Brick CIty" documentary.
http://bit.ly/brickcity

Another Speech?

Last week a 5 part documentary series on Newark, New Jersey called “Brick City” aired on the Sundance Channel. The series was an excellent look at a tough nosed city fighting to rehabilitate itself from decades of violence, blight, poverty, back-handed politics and everything else that troubles inner-city communities. The show is centered on Newark’s highly motivated, energetic and young Mayor, Corey Booker. The Mayor, along with his staff and countless number of residents struggle to find ways to empower residents, steer youth away from gangs and reduce violent crime.

In this never ending struggle of poverty and violent crime another life is lost on a Newark street and the Mayor has to be available for comment to assure residents of their day to day safety and to demand that justice will be sought against the perpetrators. Throughout the series, this scenarios is played out multiple times leaving residents feeling any more safe or confident that justice will be sought (despite a significant reduction in murders from the year before).

Today I read about an honor roll student in Chicago who was beaten to death while walking to school. Just haven seen “Brick City,” I couldn’t help but wonder what would Mayor Booker do if he were in the Chicago’s mayor’s position…make another speech? I’m sure in Mayor Booker’s speech he would talk about how communities need to come together to overcome their ills, that we all must work harder together to protect our future, the youth and that law enforcement will work harder and smarter to try to prevent crime. But I just don’t believe these speeches anymore. This is not meant to mock or chide Corey Booker or the position that he is in as Mayor but I do not believe that if we work harder, smarter or more united that we will bring forth change. There is nothing the Mayor can do without systematic change to how cities and its suburbs are taxed and governed as well as taking a regional outlook on how to concentrate resources and improve access to employment centers, education and health institutions for everyone within a metropolitan area. Without systematic change, another speech…is just bullshit.

One of my favorite shows is “The Wire,” a fictional but very real portrayal of the inner city life and politics of Baltimore, Maryland. Fictional scenes from “The Wire” could have been easily interchanged for the non-fictional documentary of “Brick City.” During one of the final scenes of the third season of “The Wire,” an aspiring councilman who has hopes of becoming mayor makes a very ambitious speech that if the city does not come together united that the city’s neighborhoods will be permanently succumbed to violence. And if the police could just work a little bit harder and smarter, they can win the war on drugs. The dramatic scene and the very ambitious and captivating speech ends with a loud roar and applause from the council chambers to which the creators of the show say in their commentary of the scene…bullshit.

Just as in fiction as in real life, the problems of the inner-city are not just behavioral but structural. It does not matter how well someone’s good intentions are or how well a structure is dressed up, if the structure is built on a loose foundation such as a hyper-concentration of poverty, poor education, poor access to jobs and healthcare…the structure will collapse almost every time.

BRICK CITY

BRICK CITY, is a five-part documentary series that captures the daily drama of a community striving to become a better, safer, stronger place to live. Against great odds, Newarks citizens and its Mayor, Cory A. Booker, fight to raise the city out of nearly a half century of violence, poverty and corruption.

Eminem - Beautiful

After seeing the past video of Detroit on the move, this video shows the same buildings which were being built in the 1960's now in decay.

DETROIT: City on the Move (Part 1)

This public domain film narrated by then-mayor Jerome P. Cavanaugh was made in 1965 to promote Detroit. The city faced many urban problems and its population was in decline. These difficulties were amplified by the 1967 riots, which are seen by many as one of the most significant events which led the city into a forty year decline. Since the mid 50s, the population has dropped by half and the infrastructure has been destroyed or has decayed due to abuse and neglect.

Detroit

I have never been to Detroit but I always have a fondness for cities like it because they will never be what they once were. I primarily grew up in Baltimore and spent a lot of time in Philadelphia so I understand what it feels like to see a city past it's glory years. No matter how much time as planners we spend to make our overall city environments better, we know that the factories that helped build our towns and cities and the factory workers who lived in them, are not coming back. The barren industrial landscapes are not only eyesores but they continue to decay into decrepit architectural skeletons.

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While others mock Detroit's struggles or just write it off as a forgotten city, I have great sympathy for a city which helped create our modern way of life. A large part of who we are and how we define ourselves was built off of Detroit Labor and for that I don't feel it is right that we turn our back to the city now that it is struggling. I understand that we are a free market capitalist society and that industries come and go and it is up to cities to plan better for it's peaks and valleys. I am also certain that the city and state governments as well as the major car companies did not have a proper plan in place for the city's future and in those respects, the city was destined to fail. But ask yourself, on a historical level, where would we be as a country, without Detroit?

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Detroit was a great American industrial jewel that we are allowing to crumble like the ruins in Rome. The only catch is that Detroit has not been deserted. Among these industrial ruins is the nation's 11th largest city where over 900,000 people reside. Our nation's forgotten major city is still larger then the cosmopolitan cities of San Fransisco, Boston, Seattle and Washington D.C. While we can never bring Detroit back to what it was 50 years ago, we can still transform the city from a once great industrial city into a great historical city and not watch city turn into a ruin from a far.

"Despite the ugliness that is inherent in these photos: the ugliness of poverty, the tragedy of loss, and waste, this building still lets us glimpse something beautiful. In Detroit this beauty is uniquely sustained. In other cities, buildings like this would be turned into luxury loft condominiums. They would be knocked down so that something new could be built in their place, their contents dragged off to a landfill and forgotten. Here we get to see what the world will look like when we're gone. We see that the world will indeed go on, and there is a certain beauty to nature's indifference."

Text copyright and pictures 2008, James D. Griffioen

Urban schools use marketing to woo residents back

Interesting article from Richmond Channel 8 News. As anyone knows, no city can bring back it's middle class without significantly improving it's public inner-city schools. The article quotes:

The $50,000 campaign by a school system still trying to rebound from a long history of racial segregation and white flight is an example of efforts under way in several cities to retain students. School districts are highlighting improvements to halt declining head counts so they can retain their funding, especially in light of drastic state budget cuts.

"People are still stuck with perceptions of yesteryear, and are not really aware of what we have to offer today," Richmond Superintendent Yvonne Brandon said. "It's not perfect, but be a part of the solution and become invested now."

Unfortunately for some cities, the need for more students seems to be a numbers game to keep funding for an already under funded system.

Detroit's fiscally troubled system has lost more than 45 percent of its students over the last decade, leading to scores of school closures. The district this month launched a $500,000 "I'm In" campaign to keep students in the district, enlisting the help of ex-NBA player Derrick Coleman and comedian Bill Cosby and donations from private companies - including pro-bono work from advertising and public-relations agencies, spokesman Steven Wasko said.

The school system gets about $7,560 in state funds for each enrolled student. Its enrollment target is 83,777, and "any student above that translates into more funding," Wasko said.

What are your thoughts? To read the full article, click here.

Playing Against the Odds

From PostBourgie.com:

Talent and dedication may not be enough to keep the girls of Middle School 61 in Brooklyn on the basketball court. Above, a textbook example of the structural and cultural barriers that prevent so many inner-city girls from participating in team sports.

In the suburbs, girls’ participation in sports is so commonplace that in many communities, the conversation has shifted from concerns over equal access to worries that some girls are playing too much. But the revolution in girls’ sports has largely bypassed the nation’s cities, where public school districts short on money often view sports as a luxury rather than an entitlement.

Coaches and organizers of youth sports in cities say that while many immigrant and lower-income parents see the benefit of sports for sons, they often lean on daughters to fill needs in their own hectic lives, like tending to siblings or cleaning the house. …

In the suburbs, girls play sports at rates roughly equal to boys. A 2007 survey by Harris Interactive of more than 2,000 schoolchildren nationwide showed that 54 percent of boys and 50 percent of girls in the suburbs described themselves as “moderately involved” athletes.

Urban areas revealed a much greater discrepancy. Only 36 percent of city girls in the survey described themselves as moderately involved athletes, compared with 56 percent of city boys.

Girls in cities from Los Angeles to New York “are the left-behinds of the youth sport movement in the United States,” said Don Sabo, a professor of health policy at D’Youville College in Buffalo, who conducted the study, which was commissioned by the Women’s Sports Foundation, a private advocacy group.

What's wrong with bringing in Higher Income Residents to the 'Hood?

In my previous post I discussed Gentrification and New Urbanism where the founder of New Urbanism, Andres Duany seemed to be in support of Gentrification. In an interview with American Enterprise in 2002, Duany ponders why there is a negative connotation with gentrification and bringing in higher income residents. Here is an excerpt of that interview:

TAE: You’ve complained that some poverty activists actually resist measures that reduce poverty.

Duany: Oh yes. There are, for instance many, many places where what the town needs most desperately is what is now derisively called “gentrification.” When I study most inner cities I see poverty mono-cultures. The arrival of some higher-income residents is exactly what they need, so it’s amazing that gentrification has become a negative term.

What smart urbanists want is to have a full range of society within neighborhoods. You need people who are CEOs, and people who are secretaries. You need school teachers, and you need somebody to deliver the pizza. Society doesn’t work unless there are all kinds of people around, in relatively close proximity. Any society that has only one income level is dysfunctional. And, by the way, the great thing about the American system is that everybody can actually aspire to rise to the level of “gentry.” We don’t have the generalized envy and resentment that you find in many other countries.

But “gentrification”—attracting the middle class back to poor areas—is sometimes resisted by certain local activists. Why? Because it threatens to break up their political coalitions, and their base of power. When I first ran across this I was just amazed. I was so naive. Why wouldn’t this poor area want middle class people moving in? I mean, you need the tax base. Now, I see selfish local bosses as the source of the resistance.

Ok, here's my beef. I do not belief that bringing in higher income residents into poor urban neighborhoods is the only way to improve neighborhoods. I believe you can generate the same results of improving the living conditions of a poor neighborhood by improving their access to jobs, education and healthcare. I do believe it is important for young people, especially young people in poor urban neighborhoods to have role models. And having an economically diverse and socially diverse neighborhood is a great way of producing various role models for young people to model themselves after. We know that in some urban neighborhoods the lack of proper role models is severely lacking but I believe with better access to opportunities, role models can be created from within the neighborhood rather than imported.

Poverty mono-cultures as Duany points out are prevalent within inner-cities and a lot of times these cultures unintentionally help reinforce their own social and economic barriers. Other times these poverty mono-cultures are products of historical trends and current lack of access to opportunities. Whether their problems of poverty mono-cultures are self imposed or they are being generated externally, it is social and economic barriers that keeps the community in poverty. If the barriers are removed then the community can create its own economic and social stratosphere and will not have to depend on an outside force to do that for them.

I truly agree that is not healthy to have one income neighborhoods as Duany points out above. However for a neighborhood to be truly stratified where a CEO can live in the same neighborhood as his secretary, then that CEO is going to have to be willing to go to the same neighborhood church with their secretary. The CEO is going to have to let their kid go to school with their secretary's kid and when the kids get older have both kids allowed to date. If the CEO chooses to live in that same neighborhood but still partake of all the trappings of CEO such as private schools, country clubs, etc... then the secretary and her family will slowly be pushed out of the neighborhood or will not benefit from any of the social interactions of living next to a CEO.

As far as local activists against the moving in of higher income residents because it will destroy their power base - well, I'm sure it's true in some instances but in most instances these activists are fighting for a neighborhood that's in fear. For every example of where gentrification succeeded in not permanently displacing the poor and not significantly raising property values past the median home value of that city, I can point out five other examples were gentrification did the opposite and the people who had the least continued to struggle.

Let me be clear, I'm not against the upper class moving into urban neighborhoods, we all know cities could desperately use their property taxes - to help the poor. I just don't believe that adding the upper class to neighborhoods will create an economically stratified environment unless everyone shows some sacrifice and participation to create a truly diverse neighborhood. The answer for every urban neighborhood can not be add higher incomes and condos. To me it is the equivalent of every East Coast state legislating casinos to cash in on gambling. Eventually there will be not enough gamblers. And eventually there will be not enough high income residents to spread across our metropolitan regions to save our neighborhoods.

So while I do agree partly with Duany that high income residents should be added to some urban neighborhoods, I firmly believe that better living conditions can be created within neighborhoods internally and that the removal of economic and social barriers can generate better living within urban neighborhoods.

What are your thoughts?

20/20 Report Hip-Hop Special (1981) - Part 2

Hip Hop is a product of the city. Similarly to the Blues, Hip Hop begun from the spirit of the havenots and the burdened. The economic conditions of people from both genres helped inspire the melodies, songs and messages of their plight, glory and spirit. However, Hip Hop as a genre itself was created from it's own economic conditions. The lack of money for instruments, music training or even music programs in city schools inspired city youth to come up with their own music and their own sound without instruments.

20/20 Report Hip-Hop Special (1981) - Part 1

Like no other music before or after it, Hip Hop intrinsically belongs to the city. Hip Hop was birthed in the city, lives in the city and could not have been started anywhere else but the city.
Other musical genres have their meccas of their musical art, be it Jazz from New Orleans, Country in Nashville, the Blues of Memphis or the Rhythm of Motown...but while these cities that drew in artists from all over the map to help spread their genre's music, HIP HOP was started purely by city residents, for city residents with out any outside influences.

Architecture School - Ep 1 Part 1

This is a really good show that shows architectural students trying to bridge architecutral design with community wants and needs. After watching a few episodes of seeing these architects deal with the community you can really see the importance of needing a community planner.

Even though architects build spaces for people they may not be the best people to deal with the sensitivies of peoples needs. The built environment can often trump the dynamics of the social environment in their minds which can often lead to conflict and disapproval.

But this is a great show, that shows the challenges of building in the urban environment.