The First (And Decidedly Juicy) Links of 2008!
Hayley Richardson | Thu, Jan 3rd, 2008 | Category: Commentary | Tags: commentary, hayley richardson, 2008, richard florida, first links, delicious links, white plains
“City preservationists scored a victory Wednesday when the Historic Review Commission of Pittsburgh voted to recommend that buildings housing the former National Negro Opera Company and the Workingman’s Savings Bank receive historical designation that would spare them from the wrecking ball.”
A Peek at Richard Florida’s New Project:
Richard Florida’s latest research shows that vibrant music “scenes”—or a city’s “audio identity”—are good indicators of urban vitality.He writes:
“As part of a new project on the music industry and its impact on regional economies, I worked with Kevin Stolarick, a University of Toronto colleague at the Martin Prosperity Institute, as well as Charlotta Mellander of our affiliated Prosperity Institute of Scandinavia and Scott Jackson, a doctoral student at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., to chart the evolution of popular music scenes and what they mean for regional economies. Our findings suggest there’s good news coming.
Taxpayers Will Subsidize Yankee Stadium Parking
“Yes, the Yankees’ season is over. But on the bright side, this morning the city handed the team a nice consolation prize: $225 million in tax exempt bonds for parking deck construction at the new Yankee Stadium.
Under the agreement, the city will give up some $2.5 million in taxes, with an estimated $5 million forfeited by the state. And the asthma-plagued South Bronx will get almost 4,000 new parking spaces, in garages the city aims to draw traffic to year-round.”
“The Mayor of Paris is about to launch another novel scheme for fighting congestion and pollution: self-service cars. Bertrand Delanöe aims to start with 2,000 electric-powered vehicles that subscribers can drive off without booking at dozens of sites 24 hours a day and then leave anywhere in the city. It is intended to complement the Vélib, the highly successful bicycle scheme that Mr Delanöe opened last July with 5,000 rental stations around the city.”
“Nine years ago, when Mayor Joseph M. Delfino was first elected, downtown White Plains felt somewhat abandoned, its commercial arteries pockmarked by shuttered shopfronts, dollar stores and crumbling facades — echoes of the recession that had upended the local economy in the early 1990s. Today, downtown is a study in contradictions, a place where brands as popular as Wal-Mart and Target and as exclusive as Trump and Ritz-Carlton occupy prominent spots in a newly developed strip spanning four city blocks. “
“Public housing used to mean fortress-like blocks and soulless rows of cheaply built townhouses. But now there’s a new model: privately developed homes and apartments that are well-designed, well-built and attractive enough to win over wary neighbors. A growing number of architects, from established stars to ambitious up-and-comers, are looking to such projects as an opportunity to do innovative work.”
Here’s a good discussion topic: Have a look at the designs, and consider whether this new wave of housing is more “modern” than affordable housing in the past. As one comment points out, Le Corbusier’s designs were thought modern, at the time. Have the designers solved any particular problems, or just made them look nicer? Do you think low income housing can ever be successful? Under what conditions?
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Mark
Sun, Jan 06, 2008 at 3:19pm
As regards the housing projects: don’t underestimate the importance of ‘just’ making the buildings look nicer. Everyone deserves beauty in their lives, and low-income housing has been historically fug-ugly. One of the residents of the LA Rainbow Apartments said in the article that the building ‘wakes up [his] soul.’ That’s beautiful, and good.
I think, too, that the inclusionary housing the article discusses is key to successful low-income housing policy. Crime rates aren’t so much linked to individual poverty as they are communal poverty; building mixed-income neighborhoods seems to be an important part of the solution, and these new designs would allow easier integration of public housing into ‘nicer’ areas.
Here in the US, we like to marginalize and cordon off our poor. We commute from our ‘nice’ neighborhood to the ‘business district’ and back, never really interacting with poor people save maybe dropping (or not) a quarter in the old man’s paper cup. It’s easy for us to ignore or - worse - abstract the poor. But start integrating them into our more affluent areas, and suddenly it’s not about ‘the poor’ - it’s about my neighbor Gerald who always invites me over to watch football, and his kids David and Marcie who annoy me when they’re playing loudly on the street. In other words, it becomes about actually engaging with people, as real people and not as abstracted groups. Relationships form, others’ problems become problems in common, and sooner or later many more people are working toward solutions. When low-income housing can lead to that sort of thing, then it can become successful.
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