The points in the linked Atlantic piece will resonate strongly with anyone who has lived or experienced recovery.
Here are the author's main takeaways:
Collaborations need to be achievable to be useful
Good regional governance needs strong state buy-in
Collaborations need strong commonalities of interest
Disaster response should be guided by geographies of need, not geographies of government
How Local Governments Hinder Our Response to Natural Disasters - David Wachsmuth - The Atlantic Cities
This, alongside of my friend Mary Rowe's recent piece about New Orleans's "granular resilience" are examples of welcome analysis when thinking about the structure of recovery.
Rowe piece
Essays, links and visuals highlighting an alternative, resilient place at the strategic crescent of one mighty river.
Showing posts with label Jane Jacobs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jane Jacobs. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Monday, March 11, 2013
Phuck the Fork in the Road, sez this opinion writer...
Well. This is quite an opinion piece on the idea of food trucks in New Orleans. I was glad to see it when a friend linked it on fb, although I will have to say that some of the connections the author makes I cannot yet agree with, not having seen all of the information. Additionally, there is some polemic language, like hipster-capitalists, which is an oversimplification in my estimation, although not entirely untrue. Of course, reading the comments one finds even more name calling and ridiculing of the author. Truly this sort of behavior doesn't seem to be a way to learn about each other's ideas and opinions.
Having said all of that, I agree with much of this piece and would hope that those trying to "fix" New Orleans would take a little more time to understand the context of our history and stop comparing us to other places that have almost no similarities with us, except of course what seems to be the important one for those trying to fix us, that those places they compare us to have a large young population that moved there recently. Whether or not our resources should be spent on holding those folks here by offering them what they could find elsewhere seems illogical and quite possibly a fools errand.
I'd much prefer that we invest and legislate for the return of decent programs to help the least fortunate of our citizens and to encourage the widespread ownership of businesses and homes anchored in neighborhoods among those who have roots here, whether new or not. As for roaming trucks: I am for a few of them, within reason. As a matter of fact, as a community food system advocate, I have spent most of the last decade and a half working on behalf of roaming farmers markets. However, the Food Truck Coalition seems to be focused on capturing CBD lunch business and asking to compete side by side with anchored restaurants rather than encouraging healthy food in food swamps or food deserts if you prefer.
If access to food is the goal, then let's legislate that and ask those who are allowed to operate food trucks to offer local products and healthy choices with low sodium or fat options, work in food insecure areas at least 3/4 of their time and also not allow these trucks to pollute with noise or trash or to set up within 300 feet of a existing restaurant.
Let's also stop the name calling and realize that every issue has many more than 2 sides to it and all of them should be heard and read by the citizens that live in our fair city.
Fork in the Road: Who’s Behind the Push for New Orleans Food Trucks? – Antigravity Magazine
Having said all of that, I agree with much of this piece and would hope that those trying to "fix" New Orleans would take a little more time to understand the context of our history and stop comparing us to other places that have almost no similarities with us, except of course what seems to be the important one for those trying to fix us, that those places they compare us to have a large young population that moved there recently. Whether or not our resources should be spent on holding those folks here by offering them what they could find elsewhere seems illogical and quite possibly a fools errand.
I'd much prefer that we invest and legislate for the return of decent programs to help the least fortunate of our citizens and to encourage the widespread ownership of businesses and homes anchored in neighborhoods among those who have roots here, whether new or not. As for roaming trucks: I am for a few of them, within reason. As a matter of fact, as a community food system advocate, I have spent most of the last decade and a half working on behalf of roaming farmers markets. However, the Food Truck Coalition seems to be focused on capturing CBD lunch business and asking to compete side by side with anchored restaurants rather than encouraging healthy food in food swamps or food deserts if you prefer.
If access to food is the goal, then let's legislate that and ask those who are allowed to operate food trucks to offer local products and healthy choices with low sodium or fat options, work in food insecure areas at least 3/4 of their time and also not allow these trucks to pollute with noise or trash or to set up within 300 feet of a existing restaurant.
Let's also stop the name calling and realize that every issue has many more than 2 sides to it and all of them should be heard and read by the citizens that live in our fair city.
Fork in the Road: Who’s Behind the Push for New Orleans Food Trucks? – Antigravity Magazine
Sunday, December 04, 2011
Charity Hospital reminder
Roberta Brandes Gratz, writer, critic and regional supporter has written many articles clarifying the battle for New Orleans between citizens and bureaucrats. This article on Charity Hospital was written in the spring for The Nation and should be spread widely, as the destruction of lower MidCity continues in defiance of what the citizens want-the reopening of the existing Charity Hospital on Tulane Ave.
Instead of reopening the solid street level structure, a money making scheme for developers (as Gratz points out about the new development) as "the design of the complex calls for closing all the streets, erasing the street grid and minimizing pedestrian access, all adding up to a fortress-like campus. Only about one-third of the new LSU site is needed for the hospital complex; the rest is for six city blocks of suburban-style surface parking, temporary green space and future speculative development by LSU, which will compete with existing commercial space in the core, much of which is already vacant."
We're not done yet folks. Let's remind ourselves and our officials that we still need a hospital and the one that already exists will do just fine.
The Nation
Instead of reopening the solid street level structure, a money making scheme for developers (as Gratz points out about the new development) as "the design of the complex calls for closing all the streets, erasing the street grid and minimizing pedestrian access, all adding up to a fortress-like campus. Only about one-third of the new LSU site is needed for the hospital complex; the rest is for six city blocks of suburban-style surface parking, temporary green space and future speculative development by LSU, which will compete with existing commercial space in the core, much of which is already vacant."
We're not done yet folks. Let's remind ourselves and our officials that we still need a hospital and the one that already exists will do just fine.
The Nation
Monday, April 25, 2011
Tactical Urbanism
from StrongTowns website:
DateWednesday, April 13, 2011 | AuthorCharles Marohn
Sometimes we want to make change but working within the system is just not getting it done. Sometimes the change we desire just needs a little nudge to get going. And sometimes it's just fun to go rogue, all for the cause of making our cities better.
Sometimes you need some Tactical Urbanism.
My fellow CNU NextGen'rs Mike Lydon and Dan Bartman (Twitter) along with Ronald Woudstra and Aurash Khawarzad have created and published a guide to making immediate change at the block level. Tactical Urbanism, the name of the report and the approach, is a do-it-yourself mashup of Jane Jacobs thinking and the Sons of Liberty tactics. This toolbox is exaclty what is needed for today's urbanist.
Tactical Urbanism is a pattern that features the following five characteristics:
1. A deliberate, phased approach to instigating change;
2. The offering of local solutions for local planning challenges;
3. Short-term commitment and realistic expectations;
4. Low-risks, with a possibly a high reward; and
5. The development of social capital between citizens and the building of organizational capacity between public-private institutions, non-profits, and their constituents.
Click here to read the entire article and to download the report:
Download report
DateWednesday, April 13, 2011 | AuthorCharles Marohn
Sometimes we want to make change but working within the system is just not getting it done. Sometimes the change we desire just needs a little nudge to get going. And sometimes it's just fun to go rogue, all for the cause of making our cities better.
Sometimes you need some Tactical Urbanism.
My fellow CNU NextGen'rs Mike Lydon and Dan Bartman (Twitter) along with Ronald Woudstra and Aurash Khawarzad have created and published a guide to making immediate change at the block level. Tactical Urbanism, the name of the report and the approach, is a do-it-yourself mashup of Jane Jacobs thinking and the Sons of Liberty tactics. This toolbox is exaclty what is needed for today's urbanist.
Tactical Urbanism is a pattern that features the following five characteristics:
1. A deliberate, phased approach to instigating change;
2. The offering of local solutions for local planning challenges;
3. Short-term commitment and realistic expectations;
4. Low-risks, with a possibly a high reward; and
5. The development of social capital between citizens and the building of organizational capacity between public-private institutions, non-profits, and their constituents.
Click here to read the entire article and to download the report:
Download report
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
I like Jane Jacobs
A few years ago, I started to learn more about urban planning and neighborhood level activism-well, I had already a bit of experience in that area, but much more in the Alinsky style of campaigns, aligned with confrontational and crisis politics . Successful in its own manner, but exhausting as an organizer. After leaving organizing behind for a few years, I returned to retail management and while researching retail anthropology, happened on the book "City" by William H. Whyte and was transformed.
Really. I read it over and over. Read it while sitting in my beautiful apartment over the 5 and 10 store on Walnut Street in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh. I loved it. Quoted it to the quiet annoyance of my friends. And then, through that book and Whyte, found "The Death and Life of Great American Cities".
I (like many other young women I am sure) studied the picture on the Modern Library edition of TDALOGAS and thought it was cool that an "older lady" (as I thought then) would have a picture of herself on a bar stool. I liked the voice of this writer-sort of crabby and impatient while she observed just about everything and then described it in matter-of-fact, human terms.
After finishing it, I understood more about the feelings of unease that I had when I went home to Cleveland and saw wider streets with higher buildings and less people. And why I walked on Madison in my suburb of Lakewood and not on Franklin. And then why I felt completely at home in my mother's city of New Orleans and why I mystified others and myself by asking to be transferred to a vocational high school that I could walk to from my French Quarter home, even if it meant kicking aside cups and and sidestepping dancers and vomit on Bourbon Street (it was the most direct route). Now I got it.
I added more books to the pile to read, finding most of Jane's works, Whyte's and many more. I walked everywhere studying the cities I lived in and seeing where so many had gone wrong. I stayed in the old sections of those cities and met generations who had worn down the sidewalks and went to that elementary school and helped out at this library..
In 2000, I moved home again (New Orleans) for good, determined to spend the rest of my life in community work, knowing that the laid back yet sophisticated citizenry would be the best partners to have.
I started with a campaign to stop the privatization of the water system. I volunteered with some very adept organizers brought in to run the campaign. I did that while I worked as a buyer in my neighborhood grocery store and volunteered at the farmers market.
Often the Water Girls (they put up with this nickname, but barely) would run in to ask me a question as I did inventory on books at the store or when we would walk to the Hare Krishna house to get dinner while we strategized. They certainly were using Alinsky's methods, but my prism was how to keep this issue interwoven with the numerous other problems at stake here and also how to use the assets that our area had. NO question in my mind how the lack of priorities (or lack of attention to SCALE) had allowed us to come to this pass, but also how people's knowledge of their reality in this colonial city had stayed some hands too. Honestly, I felt that this was our Lower Manhattan Expressway. (And then thought that again about a dozen times since.)
We won. And in record time, confusing the young organizers. In essence, we won because even though locals weren't organized regularly, the public space and shared culture to meet and see each other, know each other had worked in our favor. It allowed those organizers to find real people and have real conversations. I hope wherever they are and whatever they are doing, they all remember that lesson.
And, well even better, I soon got a paying job at the farmers market. I remember when I had my first conversation with the guy who started the market; he asked me if I knew "who Jane Jacobs was." Turns out he had used Jane Jacob's words to craft his manifesto back in the mid 1990s and her ideas remained central to his theory. "The Economy of Cities" is required reading around here- well, actually there is no required reading, but it would be cool if you knew what we were referring to.
So, I found the link between campaigns (market days) and smart, human-sized entrepreneurial town squares. I share Jane's ideas with new markets that I work with, and find that they resonate with rural, small town or big city folks. I like that she was no authority or expert; instead she was a humanist and a systemic thinker who believed in people and messy democratic entrepreneurial activity. My new favorite current writer, Rebecca Solnit reminds me of her; in the belief in people and the firmness of language and fluidity of subject. How nice to think a genre may be developing.
I hope you can find Jane too, or have already found her. If you want to find others who feel the same way in your area, look for them on Jane's Walk on May 1, 2010.
Click to see the walks in your town, or just like Jane would expect, just start one yourself.
Jane's Walk
Really. I read it over and over. Read it while sitting in my beautiful apartment over the 5 and 10 store on Walnut Street in the Shadyside neighborhood of Pittsburgh. I loved it. Quoted it to the quiet annoyance of my friends. And then, through that book and Whyte, found "The Death and Life of Great American Cities".
I (like many other young women I am sure) studied the picture on the Modern Library edition of TDALOGAS and thought it was cool that an "older lady" (as I thought then) would have a picture of herself on a bar stool. I liked the voice of this writer-sort of crabby and impatient while she observed just about everything and then described it in matter-of-fact, human terms.
After finishing it, I understood more about the feelings of unease that I had when I went home to Cleveland and saw wider streets with higher buildings and less people. And why I walked on Madison in my suburb of Lakewood and not on Franklin. And then why I felt completely at home in my mother's city of New Orleans and why I mystified others and myself by asking to be transferred to a vocational high school that I could walk to from my French Quarter home, even if it meant kicking aside cups and and sidestepping dancers and vomit on Bourbon Street (it was the most direct route). Now I got it.
I added more books to the pile to read, finding most of Jane's works, Whyte's and many more. I walked everywhere studying the cities I lived in and seeing where so many had gone wrong. I stayed in the old sections of those cities and met generations who had worn down the sidewalks and went to that elementary school and helped out at this library..
In 2000, I moved home again (New Orleans) for good, determined to spend the rest of my life in community work, knowing that the laid back yet sophisticated citizenry would be the best partners to have.
I started with a campaign to stop the privatization of the water system. I volunteered with some very adept organizers brought in to run the campaign. I did that while I worked as a buyer in my neighborhood grocery store and volunteered at the farmers market.
Often the Water Girls (they put up with this nickname, but barely) would run in to ask me a question as I did inventory on books at the store or when we would walk to the Hare Krishna house to get dinner while we strategized. They certainly were using Alinsky's methods, but my prism was how to keep this issue interwoven with the numerous other problems at stake here and also how to use the assets that our area had. NO question in my mind how the lack of priorities (or lack of attention to SCALE) had allowed us to come to this pass, but also how people's knowledge of their reality in this colonial city had stayed some hands too. Honestly, I felt that this was our Lower Manhattan Expressway. (And then thought that again about a dozen times since.)
We won. And in record time, confusing the young organizers. In essence, we won because even though locals weren't organized regularly, the public space and shared culture to meet and see each other, know each other had worked in our favor. It allowed those organizers to find real people and have real conversations. I hope wherever they are and whatever they are doing, they all remember that lesson.
And, well even better, I soon got a paying job at the farmers market. I remember when I had my first conversation with the guy who started the market; he asked me if I knew "who Jane Jacobs was." Turns out he had used Jane Jacob's words to craft his manifesto back in the mid 1990s and her ideas remained central to his theory. "The Economy of Cities" is required reading around here- well, actually there is no required reading, but it would be cool if you knew what we were referring to.
So, I found the link between campaigns (market days) and smart, human-sized entrepreneurial town squares. I share Jane's ideas with new markets that I work with, and find that they resonate with rural, small town or big city folks. I like that she was no authority or expert; instead she was a humanist and a systemic thinker who believed in people and messy democratic entrepreneurial activity. My new favorite current writer, Rebecca Solnit reminds me of her; in the belief in people and the firmness of language and fluidity of subject. How nice to think a genre may be developing.
I hope you can find Jane too, or have already found her. If you want to find others who feel the same way in your area, look for them on Jane's Walk on May 1, 2010.
Click to see the walks in your town, or just like Jane would expect, just start one yourself.
Jane's Walk
Monday, May 04, 2009
Jane and JazzFest
In between searching for tickets to weekend to the Fairgrounds (thanks to my 3 friends who came through- you know who you are, and I bet you would rather not tell the world you sometimes have tickets at the last minute), I also led a Jane's Walk.
Jane Jacobs, writer, everyday activist and the symbol of regional thinking, would have celebrated her birthday this week. Since her passing in 2006(?), her friends, colleagues and peers have thought of many ways to continue her work. One of the most Jane-like is the Jane's Walk, which asks neighbors to lead a simple walk in their own words and with as many eyes and talents sharing the stage while ambling as possible. No experts, no official work to do, just post a walk and then wait to see who shows up.
We in New Orleans had 10 (our first year of joining in this) and they ran the gamut of our social streetscapes. A short simple video shows photos of many of them:
Janes' Walk
To find out more about the people who brought this to our city (and the work going on all over) visit:
The New Orleans Institute for Resilience and Innovation
And always remember (as I do on May 4) to remember fallen citizens who were gunned down walking out to their public space to protest unjust actions:
Kent State May 4
Jane Jacobs, writer, everyday activist and the symbol of regional thinking, would have celebrated her birthday this week. Since her passing in 2006(?), her friends, colleagues and peers have thought of many ways to continue her work. One of the most Jane-like is the Jane's Walk, which asks neighbors to lead a simple walk in their own words and with as many eyes and talents sharing the stage while ambling as possible. No experts, no official work to do, just post a walk and then wait to see who shows up.
We in New Orleans had 10 (our first year of joining in this) and they ran the gamut of our social streetscapes. A short simple video shows photos of many of them:
Janes' Walk
To find out more about the people who brought this to our city (and the work going on all over) visit:
The New Orleans Institute for Resilience and Innovation
And always remember (as I do on May 4) to remember fallen citizens who were gunned down walking out to their public space to protest unjust actions:
Kent State May 4
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Small is Beautiful Tuesday at 5:45 pm
Small is Beautiful study/discussion group
Tuesday, December 30, 5:45 pm
Fair Grinds Coffeehouse
(Other alternating locations will be considerately considered)
E.F. Schumacher:
“Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.”
Jane Jacobs:
... city areas with flourishing diversity sprout strange and unpredictable uses and peculiar scenes. But this is not a drawback of diversity. This is the point ... of it.
We discuss, read and dilly-dally about possibilities of the proper scale and use of resources in a regional economy.
All welcome, but argumentative participants ignored after hints.
Readings available on: www.smallisbeautiful.org
December: land trusts discussed
January: currency presentation of The Crescent, available at Crescent City Farmers Market
Information about group linked from and discussions tolerated at:
http://neworleanscanthrive.blogspot.com
Tuesday, December 30, 5:45 pm
Fair Grinds Coffeehouse
(Other alternating locations will be considerately considered)
E.F. Schumacher:
“Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility.”
Jane Jacobs:
... city areas with flourishing diversity sprout strange and unpredictable uses and peculiar scenes. But this is not a drawback of diversity. This is the point ... of it.
We discuss, read and dilly-dally about possibilities of the proper scale and use of resources in a regional economy.
All welcome, but argumentative participants ignored after hints.
Readings available on: www.smallisbeautiful.org
December: land trusts discussed
January: currency presentation of The Crescent, available at Crescent City Farmers Market
Information about group linked from and discussions tolerated at:
http://neworleanscanthrive.blogspot.com
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Community Economies
On Wednesday, June 25 at 6:00 p.m. a study/discussion group will start to meet and read about community economies, namely the idea of releasing capital, labor and land from the commodity brand it has long held in our country. These group will meet (after reading short and long essays, watching videos, listening to audio recordings beforehand) one evening a month, alternating between Mockingbird Cafe (Uptown) and Fair Grinds Coffeehouse (Downtown).
The readings are found on www.smallisbeautiful.org and will be agreed upon at the end of the previous month's meeting, with the choice(s) posted here.
Some of the discussions will center around:
Locally produced and circulated currencies have allowed bioregions to start to measure their own impact and realize their own power to make decisions. This group will study some recent success of local currencies and start to discuss ways New Orleans can add a multi-level currency of its own.
Land for farming and land for rebuilding. New Orleans has both, but very little of it has moved to those citizens who truly need it. Why is that, and is land reform necessary to truly make New Orleans thrive again?
With disaster capitalism, comes cheap labor. Migrants and immigrants flow into the cities that have immediate construction and service jobs and are so desperate for workers, very little is asked, or offered. How do we transform the energy of the new residents and also find jobs for long underemployed?
Writers such as Jane Jacobs, E.F. Schumacher, Peter Berg, Ralph Borsodi and many more have long argued that the current national economy is out of scale and out of touch. Recent financial scares have turned people's attention to the very real need of defining regional answers, and we will study those writers' ideas and host local discussions with our own visionaries and practical activists to see if the answers can help.
For more information, email darwolnik@gmail.com
The readings are found on www.smallisbeautiful.org and will be agreed upon at the end of the previous month's meeting, with the choice(s) posted here.
Some of the discussions will center around:
Locally produced and circulated currencies have allowed bioregions to start to measure their own impact and realize their own power to make decisions. This group will study some recent success of local currencies and start to discuss ways New Orleans can add a multi-level currency of its own.
Land for farming and land for rebuilding. New Orleans has both, but very little of it has moved to those citizens who truly need it. Why is that, and is land reform necessary to truly make New Orleans thrive again?
With disaster capitalism, comes cheap labor. Migrants and immigrants flow into the cities that have immediate construction and service jobs and are so desperate for workers, very little is asked, or offered. How do we transform the energy of the new residents and also find jobs for long underemployed?
Writers such as Jane Jacobs, E.F. Schumacher, Peter Berg, Ralph Borsodi and many more have long argued that the current national economy is out of scale and out of touch. Recent financial scares have turned people's attention to the very real need of defining regional answers, and we will study those writers' ideas and host local discussions with our own visionaries and practical activists to see if the answers can help.
For more information, email darwolnik@gmail.com
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