Designers push to make cities more female-friendly

Late last year, the USA Today wrote an article about Designers pushing to make cities more female-friendly. The article explores what the City of Philadelphia is doing to make a safer and comfortable environment for women, especially in districts where more than 2/3's of the households are headed by females and over 2/3's of the elderly are female.

This blog has previously made post about the lack of female designers of urban space and this article by USA Today points out the need for a better planned urban environment that is accommodating for everyone’s needs. Issues such as neighborhood violence, crumbled sidewalks, poorly lit streets, multi-story rowhouse stairs that make it tough to carry strollers or walk with a cane not only may disproportionably affect some women but also children and the elderly as well. The article argues that all of these factors create an urban environment that is not contusive to walking which is creating several health concerns for some women in these environments.

Excerpt from the article:

Consider these statistics:

• There are 118.5 million women in the nation's central cities and their suburbs, more than half the urban population.
• About 17 million women in those areas are age 65 and older — almost 60% of the total number of seniors in cities.
• Women 65 and older are three times as likely as their male counterparts to live alone.
• More than 14 million women live alone in cities.
• More than 23 million women are heads of households.
• More than 60% of those who care for an older person are women.

What is your opinion?

An Inner City Staple...Check Cashing Stores

Through out many of Americas’ inner-city commercial corridors you will find Cash Checking stores or liquor stores that have cash checking services. In many inner-city communities Cash Checking services have replaced Banks, which have either closed down or fail to see a viable market for investment. While residents of inner city communities have a higher probability of having poor credit that would not allow them to open a checking or saving account, the lack of any banking institutions hurts a community’s chances for reinvestment and redevelopment.

Furthermore, many Check Cashing services charge high fees to a community that is already strapped for cash and may help continue bad spending habits for residents who have never a checking or savings account. To be fair, check cashing is a needed service for many people for varied financial reasons. The problem is that in the inner-city; Check Cashing services are over represented and often times replace banks as the primary financial service institution for these neighborhoods.

The combination of check cashing services and rent-to-own services in communities with poor or limited knowledge of banking will leave them vulnerable to paying higher fees and interest rates for their financial services as well as leaving them vulnerable to predatory lending such as “Payday loans.” So not only can Check cashing services lead to a lack of positive financial investment in inner-city neighborhoods, it often leads to a continuing cycle of disinvestment which will make communities even poorer and more of a financial risk to banks to invest in the neighborhood.

So what are your thoughts on check cashing services in the inner-city? Do you feel that this is a needed services that has some flaws or do you feel that stronger action needs to be made against check cashing services to help protect inner-city residents?

Recognize: Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture

The National Portrait Gallery is showcasing an art exhibit about Hip Hop called Recognize: Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture that will focus on photography, painting, graffiti, film and poetry. As some of the older readers know, this blog focuses a lot on Hip Hop because it is the only American genre of music that was created from the inner-city with almost no outside influence from anyone outside of the city. This blog always like to show the intersection of Hip Hop with cities and city planning. Any exhibit showcasing Hip Hop will inherently show the art, creativity, culture and mindset of the inner-city.

An excerpt about the exhibit from their website:

"Since it's inception in the late 1970s, Hip Hop has become hugely influential in America. While the images of Hip Hop performers are as pervasive in our culture as the music itself, some visual artist have created powerful images that both celebrate and explore the complexity of this creative form. These six artist and one poet whose work is included in RECOGNIZE! have approached Hip Hop culture through the lens of portraiture, and, in combination, their contributions highlight it's vitality and beauty."

For more, click here to go the site's website.

Flashing Lights...A look at City Billboard Signs

For many local and large businesses, signage is crucial in identifying a store's location as well as for advertising to attract potential customers. In any city across the globe, businesses compete with each other to grab customers' attention with billboard signs that can be seen for several blocks away. Over time these billboards signs have become larger, brighter, more colorful, more creative, controversial, celebrity endorsed and lately, digital signs with moving graphics.

Today numerous cities are beginning to question whether billboards have become too distracting to drivers and whether these signs posing a public safety hazard. Before cities begin to think about restricting billboard signs, here is a look at Billboard signs from across the globe:

New York Billboards


Times Square Billboards


Hong Kong

Tokyo

Hollywood

Unknown city

For the Baltimoreans...A Housing Conference at Towson University

Metropolitan Dilemmas and Solutions... A focus on Housing in the Baltimore Region

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 - Towson Unversity, Potomac Lounge - University Union

From Towson University's website:

Housing is an issue that unites us all whether we live in Baltimore City, Baltimore County or the surrounding Metropolitan region. On Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 community organizers, activists, politicians, foundations and academics will bring their expertise on housing issues in the Baltimore Region to Towson University for Metropolitan Dilemmas and Solutions. Please join us for an educational and strategic experience on where and how we live in this place we all call home.

Featured Topics:
Community development corporations
The effects of gentrification
Sprawl and base realignment
Subprime mortgages
The credit crunch… and more!

For more infor, click here.

Whites to become minority in U.S. by 2050

A Febraury 11, 2008 AP article showed by 2050 Non-Hispanic whites will make up only 47% of the population and the Latino population, who will be responsible for 60 percent of the population growth until 2050, will account for 29% of the population. The Asian population is expected to nearly double and the Black population is expected to remain stable at 13%.

To read the entire article, click here.

As America is becoming more urbanized it is also interesting to see if also becoming moee diverse. It will be interesting to see whether population diversity will translate into have diverse viewpoints on space, land uses, density and housing structures. Different cultures have different ideologies on how they utilize space and housing structures. For example a large immigrant population may desire to have housing with multiple bedrooms or may require to live near public transit.

What is your opinion? Do you believe, future immigrant populations coming to American cities will assimilate to current design standards or do you believe they may have an effect in changing development and zoning codes to adapt to their cultural norms?