Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Top Ten Videos on Poverty from Change.org

7:21 PM | Posted by David Boston
Just a quick post today about an internet discovery that I would like to pass on to everyone here. Leigh Graham from Change.org's Poverty in America Blog posted a Top Ten Videos on Poverty in America last year that I have never noticed until today. I encourage everyone to go check them out, some of them are just short video clips that you can watch directly on the blog page.

I'll post the names and links to the videos here, but there are detailed descriptions of each provided on the Change.org blog, or you can always follow the independent links to find out more.

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Monday, June 29, 2009

International Planning: Jerusalem Publishes First Master Plan in 42 Years

7:18 PM | Posted by David Boston
According to an article in the Huffington Post, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat put forward a master plan for the city early last month called Jerusalem 2020. No city plans have been drafted for Jerusalem since 1967, when the city annexed (without international recognition) about 20 Palestinian villages which became East Jerusalem under Israeli rule. Many Palestinians consider East Jerusalem to be their capital city.

Before going into details about the plan, it's helpful to know a little of the recent history behind East Jerusalem. Immediately after the previously mentioned annexation, the Israeli government in Jerusalem began to "expropriate" land, which refers to the confiscation of land for the purpose of social equality. However, Israel's version of expropriation included confiscating land from Arab land owners and giving it to Jewish developers to build Jewish communities in key locations to split up Arab communities into small and separated areas.

After many Palestinian residents had their land confiscated, the Israeli government in Jerusalem froze all planning procedures and land registration processes in East Jerusalem. They then allocated only 14 percent of the land that they annexed for residential construction, gave the Israel Lands Administration the power to distribute required permits for construction, and made any other residential building constructed illegal.

The problem is, East Jerusalem is growing fast, the Israel Lands Administration very seldom gives out any permits, and most of the 14 percent of the Palestinians' own land that was given back to them is already built up and can't legally surpass Israeli density regulations. So, this obviously led to a lot of illegal (according to Israel) residential structures being built, which have been bulldozed time and time again by the Israeli government in Jerusalem. This practice of bulldozing residential structures that Israel considers illegal has been met with harsh criticism from the Palestinian, as well as the international community (especially Hillary Clinton recently in her position as Secretary of State).

And people wonder why Hamas is so powerful. Imagine the Israeli government declares that it all of a sudden owns your land, and bulldozes your house every time you try and rebuild it to shelter your family "illegally" because the government that just declared that it owns your land won't give you a permit to build on it. Policies like this are fueling increased membership in radical and violent organizations.

Now this brings us to the master plan that was just announced last month by Mayor Barkat. The plan was advertised to Palestinian residents living in East Jerusalem as a plan that boosts their housing opportunities. I guess Barkat was hoping that no one would actually read the plan.

Barkat made a point to advertise the fact that there are 13,550 new apartments for Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem included in his master plan, Jerusalem 2020. What Barkat did not mention is that the plan also includes a reiteration of their intent to continue bulldozing Palestinian housing that they deem illegal. The international community (mainly Hillary Clinton) has recently pressured Barkat to release a statement today that he would freeze plans to bulldoze 70 percent of the housing in East Jerusalem, but he still considers the homes to be illegal.

Another thing he forgot to mention is that also according to the plan, the construction of the 13,550 new apartments would not even be approved to start until the year 2030, and that would only be 70 percent of the apartments.

So if any of you are counting down the days on your Mayan calendars, that means the world will have ended 18 years before Jerusalem starts to build housing for its Palestinian people. Gee, I wonder if there's any chance of the master plan being modified before 2030.

- David
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Sunday, June 28, 2009

International Planning: The Costs of Climate Change

7:26 PM | Posted by David Boston
With scientific reports detailing threats of climate change more and more clearly, urban planners have to start taking into account the effects that climate change will have on cities and their populations. But who should have to deal with the problem of climate change? Right now it looks like lesser developed countries that are contributing the least to climate change are being left on their own to pick up a lot of costs just to protect their people.

A book titled "Adapting Cities to Climate Change" came out last month, and it points out several things that governments in Africa, Asia, and Latin America can do on the local level to mitigate the effects of climate change. One city that the book discusses as an example is Mombasa, Kenya.

Mombasa is home to about 800,000 people and is a major tourist destination in Kenya, as well as a major port city for surrounding areas. According to Mr. Khalid Salim, head of public relations and corporate affairs at the Kenya Tourist Board (KTB), roughly 65 percent of tourists visiting Kenya go to the coast. Mombasa currently serves as a major port for not only Kenya, but for parts of Uganda, Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, and Southern Sudan as well.

According to the scientists who wrote the Kenya section of the book, a 0.3 meter rise in sea level will leave 17 percent of Mombasa, which is 4,600 hectares or roughly 11,367 acres, underwater. The rise in sea level will also have a negative impact on local Kenyans who aren't living in flooded areas due to salt stress making many farmlands unsuitable for agriculture, a loss of commercial activity previously stimulated by the port, and a sharp reduction in city income from tourism.

This is backed up by the Kenya Meteorological Department, which stated that dramatic changes such as these can be expected in Mombasa in the next 20 years.

So, to try and mitigate some of the effects of climate change, many hotels on the coast have begun building walls to deal with the problem of waves reaching higher than they ever have before. Also, the city council and the urban planning department of the ministry of local government is developing a master plan to improve the city's drainage system, which until recently was in a state of disrepair.

Scientists who wrote the Kenya section of the book point out the weakness of the city's urban planning department and the inability or unwillingness of the city to enforce physical planning by-laws when discussing Mombasa's flawed infrastructure. Without enforcement of physical planning by-laws, many illegal structures were developed, access roads were blocked, and city drainage pipes were clogged.

According to Mombasa's town clerk, the drainage pipes have recently been cleared, but the city does not have a budget to implement climate change measures that the urban planning department may come up with. The town clerk said that the Kenyan national government should come up with and fund a plan to mitigate the effects of climate change, and that it should then be implemented in partnership with local governments.

I have to say I agree with that nameless enigma of a town clerk. If mitigating the effects of climate change is completely left up to cities, then cities with high amounts of poverty and a proportionately lower tax base will be less capable of funding necessary measures to protect people and their property, leaving the poor with flooded property and the rich high and dry.

But the Kenyan national government isn't exactly swimming in cash either. Perhaps some of the developed countries who spent decades upon decades polluting until the world reached this point should lend a hand with the expense, and we could even slow down or stop this process without having to rely entirely on urban planning and mitigation techniques. Oh, and please without any excuses from Americans about how India and China just passed us up as polluters, as if that somehow erases everything we ever emitted.

Just a thought. Now for my anti-FBI-watchlist disclaimer: I love America.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Saturday, June 27, 2009

People in Planning: Mitchell Joachim

4:58 PM | Posted by David Boston
Mitchell Joachim has put forward many different thought-provoking ideas, especially within the urban design aspect of urban planning. He earned a Ph.D. from MIT studying urban design, and you can check out his website here.

Most of Mitchell Joachim's ideas have been based around the idea of creating more sustainable urban environments, and I'll write briefly about some of the ideas that I found most interesting here. If you want to know more, then I strongly encourage you to visit the website.

One of these ideas is Fab Tree Hab, which uses Computer Numeric Controlled (CNC) reusable scaffolding to basically guide exactly how a tree grows. The trunk of the tree forms the main structural frame, and smaller branches woven together through use of a pleaching technique support a clay and straw-based infill. Every aspect of the home is designed to be extremely resource and energy efficient and sometimes even self-sustaining without having negative impacts on the surrounding environment.

Another one of these ideas is a concept for a Sustainable Omni Flow Transport (SOFT) car. SOFT cars would literally be soft to avoid people ever being hurt in an accident again, and they would be environmentally friendly. I've included a picture of the concept of stackable cars at an urban solar recharge port.

One last idea that I found particularly fascinating was the idea of soft floating micro-island gyms that would double as ferries across bodies of water. Energy which is usually wasted would be generated through peoples' use of the gym facilities, and this would be converted to electric energy that would be stored in on-board batteries that would propel the gym across bodies of water within an urban environment, such as the Hudson River in New York. Some of the larger gyms would be able to carry extra passengers on them as well, and as an added benefit, people using the gym get to watch something more interesting than a muted television or a mirror.

What happens if everyone gets tired halfway across the river and the battery wasn't charged beforehand? Well, aren't you the pessimist? I guess another floating gym would just have to push you to shore.

Mitchell Joachim was also on the Colbert Report last month, so you should probably check out that interview as well. Hope you all enjoyed this little glimpse into our urban future.

- David
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Friday, June 26, 2009

Great Books for Planners: List #5

10:06 PM | Posted by David Boston
Hey everyone, here's another list of recommended books. People who are interested in land use development and zoning with an emphasis on property rights are the most likely to find these books interesting.

- David
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Thursday, June 25, 2009

Planning Today: NYC Plans to Evict Homeless from Shelters

9:03 PM | Posted by David Boston
Apparently Mayor Bloomberg of New York City is a little frustrated that people remember the political promise he made in June of 2004, exactly five years ago, that he would reduce the amount of homeless people in New York City by two-thirds in five years. Because now that June of 2009 is here, Bloomberg is trying to pass a law that gives shelters a little more upfront funding, but then cuts it by twice as much for any homeless person who stays longer than six months.

As I wrote in the previous post about Michael Bloomberg charging the homeless rent to stay in shelters, a homeless shelter is a shelter of last resort. Giving obvious incentive to homeless shelters to evict any homeless families who stay for longer than six months is morally reprehensible on top of the fact that it lacks any long-term economic sense.

Putting people on the street makes more people much less likely to find work, which lowers their purchasing power, which lowers profits made by local businesses, which after a certain point forces them to cut back on employee hours and positions, which lowers the purchasing power of those employees, which hurts business further, which lowers government tax income, which forces them to raise taxes, which both scares away businesses and lowers citizen purchasing power even further.

And did I mention that it's morally reprehensible to put someone on the street when you have the ability to shelter them?

Mayor Bloomberg wanting to pass this sort of policy shows that he somehow thinks the city is fine. He seems to think there are plenty of jobs available, plenty of low-income housing available, and that the only reason that people are staying in shelter for longer than six months is because the homeless aren't trying hard enough, or they just love being homeless. No other assumed thought process seems to justify the policy.

The average length of stay in a homeless shelter is roughly nine months. Homeless advocates have pointed out that this policy will either lead to more poorly funded shelters and therefore a decrease in shelter staffs' ability to help the homeless find their way back into a job and low-income housing, or it will lead to shelters evicting the homeless three months before the average homeless family has saved up enough money to move out. It will probably be a little of both and vary from shelter to shelter. Shelters who resist the mayor's financial bullying will end up poorly funded, and shelters who capitalize off of the mayor's policy by evicting the average family three months early will make a little more money than they used to. That's just great.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

City Planning Games

8:37 PM | Posted by David Boston
Though I've always been a fan of Sim City, I never realized how many planning games people have made. If you would like to pass some free time by trying out all of those ideas you've had in the back of your mind on a fake city, you should check out one of these games. This is a screenshot from Sim City 4.


Don't be completely discouraged if your plans backfire and your town turns into a corruption-riddled slum, by the way, because you can always try again and you can be thankful that you tried those ideas out on a fake city first. Plus, these games aren't a perfect replication of real-life scenarios, so maybe the game just couldn't process your genius. I'd still take it as a bad sign though.

Here is a list of some of the games:

  • LinCity: the name was obviously inspired by Sim City, and the game was originally designed for Linux. It's features are basically the same as those from SimCity, but you can download it for free on a lot of sites. Be careful where you download from. I'm choosing not to include links because I don't want to accidentally lead people straight to a virus.
  • Transport Tycoon Deluxe: this game was developed by MicroProse, and it covers transportation planning specifically for both goods and people. You get to control bus routes, shipping lanes, placement of train tracks, air traffic, etc. It's available for Playstation (yes, original) and PC by the looks of it.
  • SimuTrans: another transportation planning game only for the PC. The main goal of the game is to reach maximum transportation efficiency with as few transfers as possible. This also involves both the transport of goods and people.
  • OpenCity: a very basic city planning game. Basically like Sim City minus the fun and details, but it is in 3D, which was an accomplishment when it was made.
  • Sim City: Maxis has developed a whole series of games called Sim City. Sim City definitely seems to include the most details in its city planning simulation, and you have control over many aspects of the planning and urban design. The newest general planning game in the series is Sim City 4.

Enjoy!

- David
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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Planning Today: Miami Beach Planner Takes Bribes

3:29 PM | Posted by David Boston
This is what you call a bad planner. If you are a planner, or a planning student, then do me a personal favor and please don't end up like Henry Johnson. Corruption in city planning departments is exactly what we don't need during an economic downturn when the planning practice is so vital.

Henry Johnson, a planner working for Miami Beach, was caught along with two of his colleagues (the chief of building code compliance and chief structural plans examiner) for taking bribes. Johnson was caught on tape taking an $8,000 bribe, and he has been accused of taking many more bribes previously.

How did he get caught on tape? Well, apparently investigators caught the developer who was paying the bribes first and promised him immunity if he would cooperate. So, he carried a hidden video camera to his next round of meetings with the Planning Department, and they were caught. Now Johnson's heading to jail for 15 months. You can check out the full story here.

Hopefully the new planning employees in Miami Beach will be able to repair the damage done in that city by doing what's right instead of what lines their pockets.

The interesting thing is that local residents are claiming to have known about the scandal for a while. Remember that if you suspect any corruption within your own city's Planning Department, send your reasons to the local media as a tip. Local investigators might blow you off, but if you convince the local news station to get on their heels for a story, you might just find your answers.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Monday, June 22, 2009

International Planning: World Hunger Reaches 1.02 Billion People

6:58 PM | Posted by David Boston
According to a report by the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization, the current number of hungry people in the world has reached an estimated 1.02 billion, which is about 100 million more people than last year. Their standard for measuring hunger is an intake of less than 1800 calories per day.

The amount of hungry people is highest in Asia and the Pacific, at an estimated 642 million people, which has risen 10.5% since last year. However, the developed world is where the amount of hungry people has risen at the highest rate. There are now an estimated 15 million hungry people in the developed world, which has increased by 15.4% since last year.

Though this probably goes without saying, the FAO reported that the hunger rate is rising as well, which is the number of hungry people relative to the world population as a whole. The hunger rate is highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where it has increased to 32% of the population.

Officials from the U.N. FAO also stated that this recent development means that the goal set by the World Food Summit (WFO) in November of 1996 to reduce world hunger by half before 2015 is not going to be met unless "substantial and sustained remedial actions are taken immediately."

The FAO has stated that the recent dramatic increase in hunger is not due to poor global harvests, but is rather the consequence of the global economic downturn and high food prices.

FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf made the following statement about the hunger crisis:

"Poor countries must be given the development, economic and policy tools required to boost their agricultural production and productivity. Investment in agriculture must be increased because for the majority of poor countries a healthy agricultural sector is essential to overcome poverty and hunger and is a pre-requisite for overall economic growth."

This is where international planners can help. Designing infrastructure of roads/water/energy and agricultural development plans to bolster a region's agricultural output with minimal funds is one valuable piece of the puzzle if the goal is to make these poor regions economically and agriculturally sustainable in the long run without reliance on international aid.

Another valuable piece of the puzzle is, ironically, international aid. Because while the long-term goal is to make poor rural communities capable of sustaining themselves, international aid is necessary to provide start-up funds for projects giving smallholder farmers access to things like tailored technologies, infrastructure, rural finance strategies and markets that they do not currently have access to.

All in all, international aid has to be used to fund projects that empower small-time farmers in rural areas of developing countries in order to increase food supply locally, and thus lower food prices in the area in order to stimulate other sorts of spending which would improve the local economies and thus eventually provide more jobs.

The FAO also makes note that the urban poor in developing countries will probably be hit even harder than the rural poor due to lower wages, a rise in unemployment, lower export demand, and reduced foreign direct investment. All of which are mainly due to the economic downturn and higher food prices.

If you'd like to help out, you can always check out Charity Navigator's site to find the charity you are most supportive of.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Sunday, June 21, 2009

Planning Today: Plans to Turn a Toronto Expressway Green

11:42 PM | Posted by David Boston
An architect from Toronto named Les Klein, of Quadrangle Architects Limited, just put forward plans to revitalize the old Gardiner Expressway in Toronto by making it green. Apparently planners in Toronto have been discussing the possibility of tearing down the expressway, and Les Klein put forward this plan as a reaction to those discussions.

I'll let you see the pictures of Les Klein's project before I give my personal opinion.


The project looks very cool, and it would be a very strong symbol of an environmental revolution. If Toronto had nothing better to do with C$500-million, then I would be all about the project. However, if C$500-million was put towards job training programs, after-school programs, shelter, improved public transportation, and food banks in the city among other things, that money would go a very long way.

However, if the city could convince private landowners and developers near the Gardiner to invest in the project due to the benefits it would bring them in property value, then perhaps it would be a different story. However, not being an expert in Canadian governmental structure or budgetary limits, I don't know all of the options available to Toronto planners.

If the Gardiner is a vital transportation link, then it should be properly maintained (to my knowledge, it has not been properly maintained for years) whether it is an eyesore or not. But being a vital transportation link certainly does not justify turning it into a park unless it is only vital to people living or working immediately next to it.

Perhaps a plan that completely reworks the transportation grid in Toronto through the use of better public transportation could intentionally make the Gardiner a less important transportation link, and this elevated park plan could go through with private investments behind it. Or perhaps the reworked transportation grid could include the Gardiner in a train system. There are other possibilities that Toronto planners should be considering before they just tear down the expressway.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Saturday, June 20, 2009

International Planning: Some Praise for "Third World Cities"

12:57 PM | Posted by David Boston
For some reason, a few people in the policy and planning field have begun to refer to Los Angeles as a third world city, or close to becoming one, in a way that hints that this is something very bad. Here are some examples of the ways that people are labeling Los Angeles as "third world" in a negative way:

"Los Angeles is on its way to becoming a 'third world city' with immigrants making up half of its workforce, says a new study by the Migration Policy Institute."

"A citywide plan that anchored Los Angeles along two major axes - the green river and the asphalt boulevard - could save it from becoming a third world city."

In fact, do a Google search for "third world city" and it looks like Los Angeles pops up more than any other city (currently four of the ten first-page results are about Los Angeles).

This brings two questions to the front of my mind. Why, in terms of urban planning, are third world cities seen as such a bad thing, and why LA?

It seems like most of the criticism associated with the term "third world cities" seems to be based off of the amount of sprawl within them, the government's inability to regulate that sprawl, and the negative consequences of sprawl that the city now has to face. Off the top of my head, I assume that LA has been propped up as the main American comparison due to the fact that LA has been popular in the academic planning field for a while now, and researchers seem to use Los Angeles as a constant in order to build off of one another's research. I assume this because there are many major cities in the United States where sprawl is a big problem, and they don't seem to be receiving the same attention.

While the sprawl that occurs in so-called third world cities is definitely a bad thing, I think that there are many aspects of cities in developing countries that planners in the United States and other Western countries would be very successful for emulating to a certain degree. An article written by Dr. Aseem Inam of MIT explains the benefits in great detail, but I will touch on some of them here.

One benefit associated with the urban structure of cities in developing countries is the high amount of commercial activity, pedestrian traffic, mixed land use, and overall life within the historic centers of the cities. These are all things that Western urban planners strive to accomplish in their own downtown areas.

Another benefit is how naturally history is a part of the rest of the urban environment within cities in developing countries. Buildings that are several centuries old stand side-by-side with new developments, adding to the sense of culture in the city.

One last point to consider is how "green" many urban areas in these cities are. To back up this point, I've included a quote from Dr. Inam:

"...centuries old buildings are cool in the summer without computer-aided sensors; rather, they do so in highly cost-effective ways, by orienting windows away from the summer sun, providing simple shading devices, construction consisting of thick walls, and fenestration that encourages cross ventilation. For example, I remember growing up comfortably in the 100 degree heat of India without air conditioning or adjustable thermostats."

They also make their urban areas more green by making recycling very widespread, and using recycled materials to construct and repair much of their infrastructure.

I think that much of the resistance against aspiring to one aspect or another of the urban planning in developing countries comes from an all or nothing outlook and an inability or unwillingness to take the pieces apart and reorganize them in a different way. For instance, I can see someone asking why we would to do anything "green" like a developing country does, when they emit the most pollutants in the world. Though this is a true statement, it is an unrelated statement, and this all or nothing logical approach unfortunately keeps people from realizing a good idea even when it's right in front of their face.

The sharing of good ideas about urban planning should not have international boundaries, nor should it have boundaries set by pride and insecurities.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Friday, June 19, 2009

Exceptional Human Beings

8:35 PM | Posted by David Boston
I know this is a little off-topic, but I just read three stories in a row about good people doing good things related to poverty and I felt pretty good myself afterwards, so I thought I'd share. Besides, with all of the corruption, threats and violence in the world being a little more prevalent in the media right now, it helps to read a good story or two to keep your chin up.

The first story is actually about a pair of sibling do-gooders who run a multicultural not-for-profit organization. Qurrat Ann Kadwani actually founded the organization, eyeBLINK, and she is also the artistic director and an actor. The purpose of eyeBLINK is to open peoples' minds to themes of multiculturalism through plays, music and dance.

Qurrat's brother, Obaid Kadwani, is also an actor and he hosts the TV-network "Namaste America," frequently covering Bollywood news among other things. He is the business manager of eyeBLINK, and he started eyeBLINK's charitable event called "Pizza for the Hungry" which hosts pizza parties in homeless shelters for one week every year. There are six lunches going on tomorrow. I have listed the cities, shelters, and times below:

  • Los Angeles, CA: PATH: 12:00pm
  • Chicago, IL: Door of Hope Rescue Mission: 12:00pm
  • Boston, MA: Boston Rescue Mission: 11:30am
  • Boston, MA: Rosie's Place: 11:30am
  • Boston, MA: Pine St. Inn: 11:00am
  • Boston, MA: St. Francis House: 11:30am
I hope that this brother-sister actor duo continue to expand multiculturalism and hunger prevention for many years to come, because they truly seem like exceptional human beings.

The second story that I read about was an old story from a couple years back, but included Rob Brezsny, the astrology column guy. Though he doesn't, to my knowledge, have a track record in helping the poor, this was a pretty exceptional deed, if only for how strange of a method it was.

This is a picture of Brezsny on the side of the road near a highway exit handing out wads of cash as people drove by. He clearly wasn't targeting the poorest of poor people, or he wouldn't be trying to hand cash out to car owners. However, he still acted on the fact that he's rich, wants to help, and didn't even do it in a way that allows him to deduct from his taxes. So good for him.

The third story that I read was sad, but it includes two young boys who are definitely exceptional human beings. Both of the young boys are walking to DC from Florida in order to spread awareness of child homelessness.

The first boy, Zach, is in the fifth grade, and he has walked from Tampa to Atlanta so far. This summer, he is finishing the walk from Atlanta to DC in order to raise awareness about child homelessness. He will be collecting letters as he goes, and will be delivering them all to President Obama when he arrives in DC to encourage him to support the fight against homelessness.

The second boy, David, is in the eighth grade, and he started his walk from Orlando to DC this summer. He had planned to stop in homeless shelters to sleep during the nights and receive free meals wherever he could. However, by the time that he arrived in DeLand, he found out that his younger sister had fallen off of her bike face first and suffered a brain injury that she is due for surgery on at the University of Virginia Medical Center.

David was brought back home quickly to be with his sister until the surgery. However, he is quoted saying he would eventually continue his trip, but not until after he spends time with his sister.

"I am sorry if this delay inconveniences anyone," Ashby said, "but my family comes first, and I must be there for my sister in this crisis. I promise to return very shortly. My mission will not be complete until I return and continue my trek."

Hopefully all ends well.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Thursday, June 18, 2009

International Planning: US-Arab Cities Forum Coming Up

6:26 PM | Posted by David Boston
For the second year in a row, mayors from American cities and various Arab cities around the world will be meeting to discuss local governance and issues of urban planning. According to an article in the Jordan Times, the forum is going to be held in Amman this year, the capital city of Jordan. The forum is going to be hosted by the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM), and will take place from June 22 - 24.

Mayor Daley of Chicago, who started this annual event last year, will be taking part and delivering a speech. Amman Mayor Omar Maani, who attended last year's forum as well, will be delivering the opening speech of the forum. According to the Jordan Times, he will mainly be talking about the major areas of cooperation and exchange that can be facilitated through the conference.

The foci of the forum this year will be several urban planning issues including good governance in city management, youth programs, public transportation and the role of local governments in economic development and investment.

There was quite the turnout in Chicago last year for this forum. Though I'm sure people have to be invited to attend as a representative of their city, hopefully even more mayors and city officials will attend this year. To give you a rough idea of how many people to expect at this year's forum, this is what attendance looked like last year:

  • Algeria (1 mayor)
  • Bahrain (1)
  • Canada (1)
  • Djibouti (1)
  • Iraq (3)
  • Jordan (6)
  • Kuwait (3)
  • Lebanon (4)
  • Libya (4)
  • Mauritania (1)
  • Morocco (3)
  • Palestinian Authority (5)
  • Qatar (2)
  • Saudi Arabia (3)
  • United Arab Emirates (3)
  • Union of the Comoros (1)
  • United States (9)
  • Yemen (1)
The mayor of Windsor, Eddie Francis, apparently did not have too much of an issue with the name of the forum, as his country seems to have been left out for simplicity's sake. Can we send Canada some love and respect please?

Thanks for reading.

(Photo of Amman courtesy of Cathy Breen from Voices in the Wilderness)

- David
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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Great Films for Planners: List #2

11:27 PM | Posted by David Boston
I know it's been a while since I posted the first short list of films, but here is another batch that people interested in urban planning may like. This particular list is especially geared towards people with an interest in international planning, but I'm sure that anyone else would enjoy them as well.

  • Children of Heaven: an Iranian movie with two poor children as the main characters. One of the siblings loses their shoes, and they go through great lengths to try and attain a new pair without their parents noticing a pair is missing. Very enjoyable for planners interested in tackling international poverty.
  • City of God: a Brazilian movie that follows three main characters through the slums of Rio de Janeiro over the course of two decades. A good piece on how crime and violence finds a way to seep in no matter what your dreams are if you live in the slums.
  • Tsotsi: a South African film that focus on a young man, Tsotsi, and his three fellow gang members. A violent depiction of life in a slum near Johannesburg that focuses on the dramatic mindset shift of Tsotsi, this movie shows us that no one is hopeless.
  • The Take: a great film set in Buenos Aires about Argentinian laborers banding together in an effort to resist the capitalistic forces of globalization and save the idle factory that once provided their livelihood.
- David
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Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Planning Today: Low-Income Neighborhoods and Disaster Planning

11:35 PM | Posted by David Boston
It is important to consider whether or not people of all income groups are equally protected when analyzing or drafting disaster preparedness plans and policies.

The disaster of Hurricane Katrina exposed the fact that lower-income neighborhoods are at higher risk in the event of a disaster in the United States. And it did so at a very heavy cost.

The most important thing to consider is whether or not we learned anything from Hurricane Katrina. Or did we simply attempt to point the finger at people until everyone got tired of talking about it? Does having someone more responsible on top really solve the problem, or if a similar disaster struck in another city would we see a similar outcome?

Instead of simply pinning blame on one group or the other, the discussion after Hurricane Katrina should have been about how we can improve our disaster planning in low-income areas. A lot of the problem during Hurricane Katrina seemed to be due to a disconnect in communication between disaster preparation authorities and residents within the low-income areas, so let's start there.

One way that communication could be improved is through more community participation in the planning process. See my post on local forums for a more nuts and bolts description of one way that the local community could be brought into the planning process.

If we take a look at Cuba (I can see some of your reactions already, just get over yourself and look at Cuba), we find a very strong track record on good disaster planning techniques. Within a very good article on the topic, Dr. Taylor, a professor in the University at Buffalo Urban and Regional Planning Department, states the following:

"...situated in the Caribbean Sea, Cuba frequently must withstand serious hurricanes. While its neighbors are battered, losing lives and property, Cuba is usually successful at averting these calamities and suffers many fewer losses. For example, when Hurricane Michelle ripped through the island in November 2001, 700,000 people were evacuated to emergency shelters and in 2004 when Hurricane Ivan battered the island with 160 M.P.H. winds, the government evacuated nearly 2 million people. The result: not a single death or serious injury. This past July, I was in Havana when Hurricane Dennis hit the island. In that city, about 100,000 people were evacuated to storm centers within a two to three hour period. These evacuations are quite a feat, given that few people own cars; Cuba has a small fleet of mostly old vehicles along with fuel shortages and poor roads."

How do they do it? Well, they gain the trust of the people living in these neighborhoods. They provide leadership training to locals, teach kids the basics to disaster preparedness in grade school, and maintain an elaborate system of neighborhood organizations that are trained to mobilize people and pass on information at the street level.

These are methods that could easily be transferred to the United States. President Obama has started the movement towards more citizen involvement and more transparency in government, but we need for our planning departments to follow suit.

If planning departments in the United States start getting serious about using methods that bring the community as a whole into the planning process, perhaps the residents of the next city that faces a large-scale disaster will know what the city's plan is beforehand and lives can be saved.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Monday, June 15, 2009

Great Books for Planners: List #4

9:51 PM | Posted by David Boston
I received another list of recommended books from the American Planning Association (APA) today, so I thought I would share them with everyone reading. All of the books today are best suited for students, planners, or scholars interested in transportation planning. Enjoy!

  • The Right to Transportation by Thomas W. Sanchez and Marc Brenman: an interesting book that points out the social and economic impacts of transportation policies. It also goes on to recommend strategies and policies for addressing inequities in the nation's transportation planning systems.
  • The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald C. Shoup: a very insightful book that takes a critical look at the money spent on storing motor vehicles along with alternatives that could save us money in the long run.
  • Parking Management Best Practices by Todd Litman: a comprehensive look at how cities can use more effective techniques to manage parking problems.
  • The Transportation/Land Use Connection by Terry Moore, Paul Thorsnes, and Bruce Appleyard: this book examines the tools and techniques that planners can use to better manage growth, improve the efficiency of travel, and contain infrastructure costs.
  • Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do by Tom Vanderbilt: this book provides many suggestions for dealing with problems associated with transportation and sprawl, and criticizes several transportation plans intended to protect pedestrians which ended up having the opposite effect.
  • Better Public Transit Systems by Eric Bruun: a very good guide for anyone interested in analyzing public transit systems or drafting plans to improve them.
- David
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Sunday, June 14, 2009

Upcoming Urban Planning Conferences

10:59 PM | Posted by David Boston
Hey everyone, just a quick but informative post tonight.

If you are interested in keeping track of urban planning conferences and conferences dealing with similar issues across the globe, then you may want to check out this website. It's a database provided through Conference Alerts, and it lists urban planning conferences from all over the world which are organized by dates.

If you click on a conference it provides additional info including a short description, a link to the conference website, a contact name, the name of the organization hosting the conference, and a deadline for submitting an abstract or proposal. Abstract deadlines have yet to pass for conferences as early as August, so be sure to check any conferences that sound interesting to you before simply assuming that it's too late!

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Saturday, June 13, 2009

Fiscal Year 2010 HUD Budget

4:15 PM | Posted by David Boston
While many states and cities across the country may be making counterproductive cuts in their budgets, harming the poor during an economic crisis, the federal government seems to be doing the opposite. If you'd like to check out the Department of Housing and Urban Development's budget for yourself, check it out here.

If you want to see the table summary, then Appendix A.2, which shows the budget details, is better if you are interested in exactly which programs are being bolstered or cut.

Overall, it looks like spending has increased by about $3.19 billion since last year. A lot of the extra money is being put into tenant-based rental assistance (TBRA) within the public housing portion of the budget, along with project-based rental assistance (PBRA) funding and the management housing insurance fund (CMHI [one of the four Federal Housing Administration funds]) within the housing programs portion of the budget.

So it looks like there is a focus on assisting people with low-income and project-based housing to allow people to stay in the homes they are in. This strategy, at the federal level, was shown again with the creation of the foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners. This is what we call safety net funding, and this is exactly the sort of thing that should be happening across the nation during an economic crisis. We cannot afford to let more people hit rock bottom at a time like this.

Enjoy taking a look at that budget if you get the chance.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Friday, June 12, 2009

Metropolitan Poverty Pockets and Institutional Constraints

3:39 PM | Posted by David Boston
I was reading the English translation of a 2001 Chinese report on rural planning strategies to alleviate poverty today (doesn't everybody secretly love to do this in their free time?), when I came across a particularly interesting section about systemic and functional sides of poverty. Let me quote it for you.

"...deliberate attention is given to the problems that plague the livelihoods of the poor, the sources of these problems, and the institutional constraints that keep poor people poor, no matter how hard they work to escape their poverty. Participatory approaches to development attempt to redress the lack of respect that systemic poverty structures deny the poor as a group. Participatory poverty reduction planning also rejects the welfare handout approach to poverty alleviation, that dismiss the poor as without the skills and the capacity to contribute in a major way to the abolition of village poverty."
What I like about this section of the Chinese report is that it recognizes the effect of institutional constraints to keep poor people in poverty no matter how hard they work. It also addresses the lack of respect that systematic poverty structures deny the poor as a group. People attach negative stigmas to poor people in the United States, such as that they are lazy, unintelligent, or irresponsible when this is usually, in reality, not the case.

Also, though I believe that welfare is absolutely necessary and that cutting it without complimenting an equal or greater decrease in need is fiscally irresponsible in the long run, not to mention morally reprehensible, I respect that the welfare approach is not their main strategy. Because overall, I am of the belief that the U.S. government tries to solve the problem of too many leaks in the boat of economic opportunity caused by institutional constraints by bailing out water with welfare. If the government would fix more leaks, they wouldn't have to bail as much water. Please note that this does not mean the government should fix one hole and then decided they don't have to bail water anymore until they sink.

What it all boils down to is that if someone is looking at the issue of equal economic opportunity and they decide between either being pro-welfare or anti-welfare, they are missing the point. The point is that there are many institutional problems that are keeping poor people in poverty no matter how hard they work, and these institutional problems could be solved by the government so that not as much welfare would be necessary in the first place. If whether or not a good, honest person makes a livable wage is beyond their control, then there is a problem that has to be fixed. Nobody wants to feel helpless.

How about an example? Let's say a guy named Tim lives in a sprawled out city, and like many poor neighborhoods besides downtown, the bus doesn't come anywhere near his neighborhood. Since Tim lives in a very poor part of the city, there aren't many businesses nearby, and there aren't any open positions in the few businesses that are close by. In order to work another low-skill job that he is qualified for, Tim would need to drive a car there because he cannot afford a taxi. In order to buy a car, Tim needs money, but in order to make money, Tim needs a job, but in order to get a job, Tim needs a car. This is an unfortunate institutional constraint that hurts local commerce by limiting the amount of employees available and lengthens the welfare rolls due to people having no other choice. This institutional constraint could be solved by improving and expanding access to mass transit.

Areas like the one that Tim lives in quickly become metropolitan poverty pockets due to institutional constraints and fiscal mercantilism techniques used by local governments. These metropolitan poverty pockets make it extremely hard for people living within them to ever escape from poverty.

Within a metropolitan poverty pocket you will typically see increased taxes, a lower tax base, less services, more crime, fewer businesses, worse schools, more infrastructure deterioration, and more people stuck below the poverty line. You will check-cashing depots instead of banks. You will see quickie marts instead of grocery stores. All of these things combined make sure that the poor stay poor in metropolitan poverty pockets. And you sure as hell won't have enough money to move anywhere better.

So what now? Now urban planners, city managers and policy-makers have to work together with local residents to identify major institutional constraints and then find solutions to them. Fiscal regionalism techniques could help to limit the amount of fiscal mercantilism going on between municipalities, which would improve infrastructure, services and tax rates in metropolitan poverty pockets. If people identify a situation in a neighborhood like Tim's, improved and expanded mass transit could provide solutions. School systems in areas with low property tax income could be improved by completely rehauling the funding mechanisms for public schools.

These are the types of problems that we have to look for, and solutions aren't always as simple as they may seem. That's why we need people from all different backgrounds contributing to discussions about urban planning. Everyone has something unique to contribute to the process that may have been overlooked otherwise.

Search for the next meeting dates for your City Council or Regional Planning Association and get involved! If you want to make sure that your city is doing the right thing, there's no better way than to check yourself!

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Thursday, June 11, 2009

Planning Today: Myrtle Beach Ordinances Target the Homeless

4:26 PM | Posted by David Boston
Thinking about feeding the homeless more than 4 times per year in Myrtle Beach? Sorry, that's illegal. The Myrtle Beach City Council just voted 8 to 1 this past Tuesday to pass an ordinance limiting "mass feedings" to four times per year.

Advocates of the ordinance say there are better places to feed the homeless than in a public park. Well, I agree, so why doesn't the city make sure that's possible instead of leaving it up to the mother of a reverend to host Sunday breakfasts?

According to Carol Stallings, who hosts the Sunday breakfasts, many of the homeless people who show up are not offered food by the nearest shelter over the weekends. So if it weren't for her Sunday breakfasts, they would be going without food for the weekend. And now thanks to the Myrtle Beach City Council, they will.

However, seeing as how Myrtle Beach residents are much more angry about the recent biker ordinances that the City Council just passed, I doubt many people will even notice.

Though surely if the reason the City Council wanted the ordinance passed was because they thought there were better places to feed the homeless, then the ordinance would make some alternatives available, right? Wrong. You can check out the ordinance here. It looks to me like this link probably won't be good anymore by the time of the next City Council meeting, but it shouldn't be too hard to find on their website. Look for the agenda for the June 9th, 2009 meeting, or contact the City Clerk for a copy.

What it comes down to is the fact that the Myrtle Beach City Council doesn't want homeless people in the city. If Myrtle Beach doesn't offer any way for these homeless people to get food on the weekends, and they make it illegal for other people to feed the homeless, they will successfully force the homeless to walk to the next city. Until that city makes it illegal to feed the homeless too, of course.

This is exactly why regional methods of planning are so necessary. The fiscal mercantilism techniques that City Council members use in cities all across America force low-income groups into neighboring cities until the poor and homeless are all concentrated in one physical space, leading to a low municipality tax base, high taxes, few jobs and little to no services.

It'd be nice if local politicians started looking at the homeless less as a burden and more as human beings without homes. One City Council member even said that "you want to have compassion for them, and you want to have a heart for them," but they still passed an ordinance making it illegal to feed them. 

First of all, it shouldn't even be up to private residents to feed the homeless people in the first place, this is something that the government should be taking care of. But when it's illegal to feed hungry people in a public space, that's when you know something is very wrong with your local politicians.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009

All Eyes On the President

10:55 PM | Posted by David Boston
The St. Petersburg Times runs a very interesting website called PolitiFact, and on this website they keep track of all of the President's campaign promises through what they call the Obameter. They rate promises as either "In the Works, Stalled, or No Action" before they have been acted upon and as "Promise Kept, Compromise, or Promise Broken" after they have been acted upon.
So far, Obama has kept a lot more promises than he has broken or compromised on, and the promises that he has kept already have included many of the large-scale economic changes that we need right now. These include the foreclosure prevention fund, the credit card bill of rights, and extending unemployment benefits, among others.

Not to mention the President kept his promise on the establishment of the White House Office of Urban Affairs, which is a big step forward in making sure that the federal government is supporting urban areas in the most effective ways possible. And, if you look at the White House's urban policy section, you will see that they focus on the need to take a regional perspective when considering urban problems and policy, which is, in my opinion, a wise position to take. Feel free to check out my posts about fiscal regionalism and metropolitan and regional planning, or read a few good books about regionalism if you'd like to know a little more about why I favor a regional approach in urban policy and planning.

Overall, the Obameter looks to be nonpartisan, which is a rare find. I thought it would be good to post this on the blog, because if you care about urban policy issues enough to read a blog all about urban planning strategies and their effects on the poor, then you probably also care about what the President is up to. 

You may also want to amuse yourself by checking out PolitiFact's Truth-O-Meter while you're on the site. Most of Obama's statements that they have checked have been true, but you can read about some very blatant lies told by all sorts of people. That is, if reading about politicians caught in lies is the sort of thing you're into.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Tuesday, June 9, 2009

International Planning: Going Green Meets Poverty Reduction in India

2:44 PM | Posted by David Boston

About three years ago, the Indian government started a major anti-poverty program called the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). This program provides work for 100 days every year to tens of millions of poor people in rural areas. 

India has now launched a pilot project to quantify the climate benefits associated with this program. Both the Indian government and experts from the premier Indian Institute of Science will be working in collaboration to quantify the climate benefits.

You may be wondering why the Indian government would care to measure climate benefits of an anti-poverty program in the first place. Well, about 70 percent of works under the program are green jobs such as water harvesting, land development and afforestation.

According to Dr. Rita Sharma, head of the ministry through which this program is implemented, mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol, such as the Clean Development Mechanism, are not yet fine-tuned enough to recognize social programs which yield climate benefits such as NREGA.

Dr. Sharma expressed hope that scientific quantification of the climate benefits that NREGA brings will lead to the revision of Kyoto mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism. If these mechanisms are revised, companies and governments will be able to invest in the benefits of NREGA in order to receive offset credits used to meet their own Kyoto targets.

She also said the Indian government should have a handle over the quantification of climate benefits as a result of NREGA within about two years, as well as some data from smaller samples in about a month.

If India's anti-poverty efforts do prove to be beneficial enough to the environment to merit investment through Kyoto, then India will be able to pursue both a reduction in poverty and pollution at the same time in an economically feasible way. Perhaps if India's program proves successful enough, other developing countries will be willing to follow suit, especially since revised mechanisms within the Kyoto Protocol would allow the global market to provide a partial source of funding for the programs.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Monday, June 8, 2009

Community Planning: Local Forum

11:31 PM | Posted by David Boston
One of the best ways to gather input from the community is to host a local planning forum. Local forums are used to generate ideas, inform the public of upcoming planning efforts, and gather critical feedback.

Whether you work for a planning department or you are just a local do-gooder trying to improve the planning process in your community, it is essential that you collect input from the local community in the early stages of your plan development. If you plan on being an advocate for certain groups in the planning process, such as low-income families, then you have to get to know the low-income families in the neighborhood before you just start drafting a city plan to fix all of their problems. You might find out that most of the locals don't like what you had in mind at all due to something you had overlooked, not being from the area.

The main costs associated with a local planning forum are securing a venue and paying for advertising. 

One good way to set up your forum is to have poster boards with information about different proposed plans propped up around the room as people start to show up. You could also set up large blank poster boards with single-line questions on them, such as "What do you like about your neighborhood?", "What do you dislike about the neighborhood?", "What improvements can be made?" or "What can you do to help?" Place sticky-notes and pens next to the poster boards to allow people to contribute.

After you've allowed a sufficient amount of time for people to browse the proposed plans and comment on your displays, start the forum by presenting and explaining the proposed plans. Go on to address some of the comments left on the poster board displays, and switch the forum over to an open debate format about the proposed plans as well as the ideas that people wrote on the displays.

Once the open debate has either dwindled down or you feel enough time has passed, allow people to separate into smaller groups to talk about more specific issues within the plans. This is also a great time to offer refreshments if you're providing any.

In order for the whole event to be as productive as possible it is important to keep the tone casual. If your presentation is too rigid, attendees will be more likely to see your forum as merely an event to spread awareness, and not as an event seeking critical feedback from the local residents.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Sunday, June 7, 2009

Advocacy Planning

9:25 PM | Posted by David Boston
I woke up feeling a little under the weather today, and I'm still not feeling fantastic, so I'm just going to write a brief post today about advocacy planning.

Advocacy planning is one of several styles of planning that a planner can use as a perspective for how they approach their work. Advocacy planners usually work in large cities where there are many different planners arguing from many various perspectives. This is because advocacy planners act as representatives for certain groups of people and act in order to advance their interests.

The idea of advocacy planning was developed by Paul Davidoff as a method of fighting for the needs of those in poverty within city plans. Davidoff was against the idea of a single planner or planning department coming up with a master plan for major cities, and advocated instead for the use of pluralism in planning and allowing many planners to develop plans from different perspectives so that everyone would be represented in the planning process.

Davidoff's ideas have been built upon since his time, and many nonprofits now hire planners to draft alternative plans for more effective lobbying.

It's funny that I'm doing a post about advocacy planning really quickly while I'm sick, because advocacy planning is really where poverty, planning and politics all really come together. Those living in poverty were first brought into the planning process through advocacy planning, and advocating in favor of the poor naturally politicizes the process and leads to a lot of political resistance and support from different groups.

Anyway, I'm going to take some pepto and do something mind-numbing to keep my thoughts away from my stomach. Thanks for reading!

- David
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Saturday, June 6, 2009

Planning Today: Solve Traffic Problems and Win $50,000

9:10 PM | Posted by David Boston

In an effort to find innovative new ideas to solve traffic congestion problems, the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITS America), which exists under the U.S. Department of Transportation's Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA), is hosting a contest which anyone can enter calling for creative solutions.

If you are interested in transportation planning, and you have some innovative new ideas about reducing traffic congestion that you would like to share with the world, this is your time to shine!

People from all over the world vote on the best idea, and if your idea is chosen you win $50,000 along with development and implementation support to help turn your idea into a reality in cities across the world.

Here is some more contest information from the website:

"The average metropolitan commuter in the U.S. spends nearly a full work week stuck in traffic each year, wasting precious time and fuel and impacting the environment, safety conditions on roads, and economic productivity to the tune of more than 1 percent of GDP," said ITS America President and CEO Scott Belcher. "Allowing congestion to grind cities, suburbs and supply chains to a halt every morning and afternoon is unacceptable when we have innovative tools, technologies, and strategies available to manage our transportation systems and utilize our infrastructure more effectively."

The ITS Congestion Challenge is a global competition to identify the best and most creative ideas to effectively reduce congestion and its impacts on the economy, environment, and quality of life.

The competition is open to entrepreneurs, commuters, transportation experts, researchers, universities, and citizens from all fields around the globe. All ideas will be reviewed discussed and rated by an open global community, to determine the best and most creative ideas to effectively solve the consequences of traffic congestion.

The winner will be announced during the 16th World Congress on Intelligent Transportation Systems in Stockholm, Sweden, September 21 - 25, 2009, and will receive a cash investment of $50,000 USD, as well as development and implementation support to pursue turning the ideas into real-world solutions."


Good luck to anyone who enters!

- David
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Friday, June 5, 2009

People in Planning: Frank Lloyd Wright (again)

1:22 AM | Posted by David Boston
For those of you who saw the recent post on Frank Lloyd Wright, I apologize. But I saw this and, being a huge nerd, I couldn't stop myself from posting it.

Yes, that's right, that is a Lego-replica of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater. Apparently this guy Adam Reed Tucker is releasing a whole Frank Lloyd Wright collection using Lego bricks. 

Even though I'm not the biggest fan of Frank Lloyd Wright's planning ideas, making cool buildings out of Lego bricks has to be something that at least a few urban planning enthusiasts out there will enjoy as a pastime. So, there you go! They come out in August of this year. You can thank me by sending me a set.

Thanks for reading!

- David
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Thursday, June 4, 2009

Community Planning: Recon Trip

7:05 PM | Posted by David Boston
I know I've been focused a lot on big issues on this blog, and those will probably remain the focus, but I wanted to do a few posts about the nitty-gritty of community planning so that I can reference basic methods in future posts if need be. Plus, for most of these methods, you can adapt them to be useful for citizen advocacy groups even if you don't work for an official planning department! 

Ok, so one of the best things to do early in the planning stages is to go on a recon trip around the targeted area or neighborhood. A recon trip is direct observation of the targeted area with a small group of local residents and technical experts. The point of the recon trip is to make everyone familiar with the physical environment and the key issues at the beginning of a community planning process.

Keep in mind that this isn't an anthropology trip, and unless you're going alone you will probably want to plan your route out ahead of time to make the most use of everybody's time. Look over your desired plan and pinpoint the groups in the community that you suspect will be the most affected by your plan, both positively and negatively. 

Call these groups ahead of time and ask to meet with someone on the desired date of your recon trip. This can be easy if you want to speak with owners of small businesses or union representatives, but if you would like to speak with residents of a specific area it can be tougher. Look for a neighborhood watch program, homeowner's association, or other types of citizen groups to find people from your pinpointed area, but if you can't find any you may need to organize and advertise a local forum beforehand to bring a couple of the people you want to talk to your way.

You'll definitely want to take lots of pictures, lots of notes, and check details in your existing plan for accuracy. 

Remember that community involvement is key in the planning process. Ask local residents if the traffic patterns are always similar to the way it looks today, do an informal fact-check of some of the info you just picked up from a meeting with a local business owner by asking nearby residents or the local residents in your group similar questions. If you have an upcoming forum or event, tell every local resident that you come into contact with during your recon trip.

Overall, this is a very casual trip to pick up local information and to get a general feel of the physical environment. And always be completely open to changing your plan depending on what you find out after speaking to enough of the people being affected by it.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Planning in History: Miami-Dade and the Two-Tiered System

11:10 PM | Posted by David Boston
The relationships between Dade County and each of the municipalities within the county provide a very interesting case to look at when studying consolidations of government.

There were several reasons behind the movement toward reform in Dade County. Before the creation of the two-tiered system, there was very little governmental organization at the county level. Around the time of consolidation in 1957, there were 31 separate municipalities in Dade County, and each of them were very autonomous entities compared to other metropolitan areas at the time.

One major problem was that there was no effective countywide agency responsible for long-range regional planning in areas such as economic development, welfare, recreation, and the physical environment. Though there were local planning boards, these were generally unproductive due to poorly trained technical staffs, inadequate financial support, and the inability on the part of both local government officials and the general public to understand the nature of an adequate planning function.

Another major problem was that without much power or organization at the county level, residents of unincorporated areas were on their own when it came to providing essential services to their area such as supplying water, electricity and a sewage system.

Yet another major problem was that the hodgepodge (yes, I just said hodgepodge) of municipal governments had to enter into a wide array of informal deals with other cities in order to provide basic services to their residents. Many cities had to rely on Miami to provide police and fire services, as well as water. Some of these services were provided due to laws passed at the county level. The trouble was that the major cities (such as Miami) were providing most of the services to smaller areas and cities, but they were unable to collect revenue from these cities in order to help pay for the services.

When it came down to it, smaller municipalities full of much richer residents were getting a free ride on services provided by major cities who had to raise taxes on their poorer residents to pay for the services being provided to the rich in separate cities due to county mandates. Clever legal setups to make the poor poorer and the rich richer, like this one, still exist in many places today, we just have to look for them.

After many years of failed attempts and fighting amongst the many municipalities, a two-tiered system was finally created in the Miami-Dade area in order to govern more effectively on the regional level. This two tiers were the city level, which would be responsible for local functions, and the enlarged and reorganized county level which would be in charge of minimum standards and overall metropolitan planning.

The powers of the county government were separated into four distinct categories: municipal-type functions, responsibilities in unincorporated areas, responsibilities for setting minimum standards, and elastic powers. The major powers included in the municipal-type functions category include:

  • building and regulation of roads, bridges, tunnels, and parking facilities
  • construction and operation of air, water, rail, bus, and port transportation systems
  • traffic control and maintenance of central facilities for records, training, and communications for fire and police
  • police and fire protection
  • preparation and implementation of comprehensive county development plans
  • maintenance of hospitals and uniform health and welfare programs
  • provision and maintenance of parks, playgrounds, libraries, museums, and other recreational and cultural facilities and programs
  • establishment and administration of housing, slum clearance, urban renewal, air pollution control, flood and beach erosion control, and drainage programs
  • regulations of water supply and sewage and solid waste disposal
  • establishment and enforcement of building zoning and codes and business regulations
  • levying and collecting taxes and special assessments, borrowing and expending of money, and issuing bonds, revenue certificates, and other obligations of indebtedness as provided by law
So, as you can see, the Dade County government got a lot more powerful after this two-tiered system was put into play. Not all of the responsibilities of the county government were in the best interest of the people, such as its responsibilities to urban renewal and slum clearing, as good as their intentions may have been. But overall, the two-tiered system helped to address the needs of many people who were previously living under the radar, and that's definitely a plus.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Tuesday, June 2, 2009

U.S. Poverty Getting Worse

7:02 PM | Posted by David Boston
In the midst of this economic downtown, it may come as no surprise to you that U.S. poverty is getting worse. But it's actually been getting worse for quite a while.

Between 2000 and 2005, a 2005 the McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor people had risen by about 26%, which was 56% more than the overall poverty population had risen during the same time span. Though the line of severe poverty slightly varies depending on the amount of people in a household and their ages, severe poverty is usually roughly anything below half of the regular poverty line for the corresponding household type. By 2007, the percentage of Americans living in severe poverty hit a 32-year high. And though I don't have data for severe poverty past 2007, I would bet money that the recession helped us hit a 34-year high.

According to the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation, only 10% of severely poor families received Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) benefits, and only 36% received food stamps.

It looks like there are a lot of holes for people to fall through in American safety net programs. In fact, according to the Luxembourg Income Study, a 25-year project that compares poverty data from 31 different developed countries, with the exception of Mexico and Russia, the U.S. devotes the smallest percentage of its GDP to federal anti-poverty programs. Also according to the Luxembourg Income Study, American programs are the least effective at lowering poverty, also with the exception of Mexico and Russia.

Now take a look at what your state is doing to balance its budget. Is your state like California, cutting the budget for homeless shelters nearly in half? Is your state like Florida, cutting entire low-income housing projects? Is your state similar to almost every state in the nation by forcing its public schools and universities to drastically cut their General Funds and General Institute Budget, usually leading to huge cuts in funding for schools in lower-income areas and university libraries?

If we don't want to see the poverty situation in America keep getting worse, we cannot keep cutting more holes in our safety net in the middle of an economic downturn of this caliber. The tiniest of tax increases for upper-tier income or adding another bracket to the income tax would cover the costs that they're saving by reducing spending on homeless shelters, low-income housing and public schools with money left over. Aside from that, letting more and more Americans hit rock bottom without proper housing or money for an education is only going to make American businesses suffer even more than they already are. If we want to see our way out of this economic downturn, we have to patch our safety net.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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Monday, June 1, 2009

Metropolitan and Regional Planning

11:17 PM | Posted by David Boston
Recently, planners have started looking more and more at how their decisions impact entire regions as opposed to just their municipality or development project. The old ways of separating areas based on classifications as either urban, suburban or rural zones are starting to fade away in favor of regional boundaries and metropolitan statistical areas.

Not only are many more gray areas starting to appear in metropolitan regions, making many areas hard to classify as either urban, suburban or rural, but more attention is beginning to be given to how planning decisions can be better tailored to serve entire regions instead of only urban areas, or only suburban areas, etc.

One of the most common examples of regional planning in action is in the field of transportation. Many metropolitan regions or counties with large cities in them will set up a Transportation Authority of some kind to create plans for the region's transportation growth, and then spend budget money allocated towards transportation accordingly.

There are some obvious benefits to looking at transportation regionally. Depending on where you place a highway or a mass transit line, you can stimulate growth in one area and drive all of the commerce out of another area. 

Just to give an example of how this is the case, let's imagine a border between two municipalities called Quiggsville and Quiggsville Beach. Let's imagine that at one particular spot on this border, Quiggsville Beach has a large shopping district on their side of the border, and Quiggsville has a residential area on their own side. Now, Quiggsville is building a highway, and they decide to run it right on the edge of their border with Quiggsville Beach. After all, Quiggsville doesn't mind if the highway will separate their residential area from the Quiggsville Beach shopping district, putting it out of business (and probably creating a metropolitan poverty pocket in that area of Quiggsville Beach). All that means to the Quiggsville government is that their residents on the border will be more likely to commute four miles down the road to the Quiggsville Mall.

Now, if this was looked at from a regional perspective, both municipalities would have a voice in the matter, as tax money from both municipalities is used by the Transportation Authority. Alternative routes for the highway could be found that would not cut across current business avenues, or the highway could be built to bridge over a major connecting road between the Quiggsville neighborhood and the Quiggsville Beach shopping district.

Obviously in a real-life scenario the problem will be more complicated than this, but this demonstrates why it is important to look at transportation issues and funding from a regional perspective.

Another major planning aspect that can be looked at from a regional perspective is that of economic development. The post that I wrote about fiscal regionalism is a good example of how to look at issues pertaining to economic development from a regional perspective, and why it is important. Fiscal mercantilism (not the same as fiscal regionalism) can often lead cities to zone out the poor, so to speak, in the absence of a regional plan, and only approve development projects that bring as much property tax into the city as possible. Planners interested in making their metropolitan area a more equitable environment in terms of services provided, housing available, or upkeep to infrastructure could find regional planning methods interesting. 

Other planners likely to advocate for more regional planning are environmental planners. If environmental planning issues are not looked at regionally, then planners in cities upriver could, for instance, decide that it's a great idea to loosen dumping ordinances on the river if their city's landfill is filling up and they don't have the political (people cry "NIMBY") or fiscal capital to zone a new landfill on the other side of town or zone for expansion of the old landfill. Then what happens to the city down the river? They have to pick up the cost of purifying the river water, because tourism happens to be one of their biggest municipality revenue sources.

So, many planners from a variety of different specialties are beginning to favor metropolitan and regional planning methods over exclusionary municipality or single-development perspectives when drafting plans. In fact, most planning programs today offer metropolitan and regional planning as a specialty on its own.

As you may have been able to guess, I'm a fan of regional planning myself. When it comes right down to it, regional planning is an attempt to save all of the money that cities would otherwise spend on two things: trying to screw over their neighbors, and repairing the economic damage left by the neighbors who just screwed them over.

It does not mean that you drafted the best plan for your own city just because it is the worst plan for the city on the other side of the highway.

Thanks for reading.

- David
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I graduated from the University of North Florida with a BA in Political Science, double-minoring in Public Administration and Urban & Metropolitan Studies. Starting in the Fall of 2010, I'll be pursuing a Master's degree in Urban Studies and Planning from the University of Maryland - College Park.

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