You Make My Heart Go Pitter-Pat, My Love of Urban Design

I am taking an excellent class, which focuses on urban design, a subject that we haven't focused on to date in any of my other classes. My professor is an urban designer and architect, working for one of the most prolific, and one of the original new urbanist design firms, Moule + Polyzoides of Pasadena. Elizabeth Moule and Stephanos Polyzoides, are both founding members of the Congress for New Urbanism.

Urban design is what made me fall in love with urban planning to begin with. I was studying abroad in Italy and my undergrad professor took us around the streets of Florence, or fine Firenze, and showed us how one could interpret a city's history based on its layout, its building materials, how close the buildings were to one another, how tall were they, etc., This made the inner history nerd in me rise up and squeak with glee.

Ever since then I've had a keener awareness of buildings and open space, the types of materials used, the layouts of cities. I'm not as much a designer, who, I maintain are more technical than creative in their objectives, therefore I didn't go to urban design school. But as an artist, I look for visual harmony in the built environment- places where people want to be, buildings that are in harmony and scale, points of interest, either natural or manmade.

My current professor teaches with the same passion as the first professor who sparked my interest. He wants us to see the world the way he does, as pieces put together that can be beautiful with enough forethought and planning. We can create places that are welcoming, energizing, and inspiring, not slapped together and without much of a purpose or focus. I hope to have an opportunity to share such insights with others in the future too.

Today I Don't Care About the Planet (Because It's Too Darn Hot Outside)

Today was definitely a day that I wished that I had a car- this wish had popped up a few days ago too when I was accidentally locked out of my apartment due to fault of my own.

We reached a record scorcher and even tonight at ten to eleven PM it's still pretty hot outside.

And I craved the 2010 Honda Insight that I've been researching in my spare time the past few days. It appears to be a better deal than the Toyota Prius and as a secretly neurotic energy nerd I am concerned about the potential for peak oil, and the increased demand (ahh more econ!) from other countries that will increase the price we have to pay here in the States. I wished, even if I was/am still living in my current place, that I could get into my personal chariot, crank the A/C and grab hold of my American right to drive myself down to the end of the block if desired.

Alas, I sweltered under the heat, wondering at what degree does rubber melt as I was wearing my favorite flip flops.

I know that I'm getting that itch to get up and go, which rears its head every two years. And one of the best ways to get away is to take yourself in a personal automobile, an option I currently do not possess. Though I am seriously considering signing up for a Zip car membership.

But this car fever made me think about how does one reach the person who has a car, loves their car and has no desire to give up their car? Especially to drive it to the corner grocery to pick up their 24-pack of unnecessary bottled water. Seriously?! We all lived without bottled water for millennia. Now I have people ask me if I want a bottle like do I want to know the cure for cancer?

I have also come to realize that looking at a lot of this through the lens of economics (admittedly often in its idealized form- there are no needs, only demands as there are substitutes everywhere kind of thinking) is very helpful.

What incentives will people respond to?

For example, no one buys those spiral CFL light bulbs because they're "cool"-the purchaser or the lightbulb. They do it because buying them will shave a few cents off their electric bill over the long haul.

Some of us may claim more altruistic reasons "I love the planet!" Yeah, but you love money more. We all do. Economists want us to put our money where our mouth is (that which we are willing to sacrifice in order to obtain something that we perceive has greater personal value than what we currently possess- oh my gosh it sunk in and stayed!)

I've been very thinking a lot about how to foster and encourage permanent social change. There is a very interesting group based in England called Futerra that deals with this concept. http://www.futerra.co.uk/

And while they have an office in New York I'd love to spread the gospel around the U.S. To quote the immortal Clash, "London calling from the underground!"

How Much Is Too Much? The Question of Government Intervention, Posed for the Second Time (to me)

I have noticed a trend in my readings for school lately- the issue of public vs. private, or public-private partnerships, and how much of a role should government take in daily affairs of its citizens?

This last question is incredibly loaded and I no way intend to make this into a Tea Party soap box other household objects noun noun mop mop broom broom?

Instead, I'd like to gripe that this information would have been very helpful to me last year when I was sitting through a rather painful and sortof unnecessary class that is required called Intersectoral Leadership.

Back then I was a snot-nosed planning punk and I didn't understand what policy had to do with planning (answer = everything!) I kind of understood that policy lets planners do "stuff," but I didn't see why I had to spend two- eight-hour weekends (Saturday and Sunday) sitting in a classroom listening to an NPO (non-profit organization) guy tell me that government has gotten so big *cue the voice you use when gesturing with a baby* SO BIG! that it has to delegate some of its functions. Woot. Couldn't one have just put that on say, a memo and I'd promise to read it (and subsequently never would.)

However, this theme has come up again to haunt me. It is getting close to Halloween, or as the Misfits say "every day is Halloween."

This time the subject is coming up in my transportation class. The question was posed, what if there were no governmental role in transportation? It's an interesting question for a planner, admittedly less so for Joe Schmoe. But it does pose an interesting parallel universe, where corporations, or savvy entrepreneurs could charge sky-high rates to utilize their roads, which may, or may not be in serviceable condition. There wouldn't be synchronizing of traffic lights, would there even be traffic lights? This is of course jumping off from the world as we know it and Big Brother just walking away, saying "Have at it, kids" not some world where traffic lights were never invented.

Also, the theme is cropping up in my economics class under the guise of markets and the government.

I suppose that this is good as I have to write a paper for my econ class about some topic that relates to economics, and yes, deep down, like Kevin Bacon, there are six degrees or less to anything in the universe and economics. I may be able to expound on bus deregulation- I'll spare you the details, but in a nutshell in the era of Reagan and Thatcher, bus routes were sold off to the private sector, leaving those who used under-utilized routes, aka often the rural routes, in the lurch. (And one wonders why London had to introduce congestion pricing.) But now I'm just nerding out.

I guess what goes around comes around. And maybe one'll like it a little better the second time. Maybe.

Falling out of love with an old love, falling back in love with an old love

So, as you can see from my last post I am suffering from "planning fatigue." I want to get off the policy-politics merry-go-round, but know that graduation fast approacheth and I better have a game plan.

And while I wouldn't say outright no to a city planning job, especially at the City of Los Angeles, where I currently intern, as everyone is friends with everyone, there isn't a stringent hierarchy, and everyone has a sense of humor about wanting to do good, but knowing that the plans of mice and men aft go stray, I'm not 100% confident that there will be a city job waiting for me anywhere anytime soon.

Therefore, I am diversifying.

I have been in love with the publishing field ever since I discovered that books do not magically appear on bookshelves. I didn't become an English major because they're a bigger (or at least a more well-known punchline than an art history major, though  a close second behind a general liberal arts major) The punchline being, sooooo, what do you do with a degree like that!? I also am not thatttttt interested in diagraming sentences or remembering what a preposition is. 

However, I love the concept of being an acquisitions editor. Someone who can see the potential in a manuscript that will inspire others and bring delight to a reader's soul.

I can name my favorite art book publishers off the top of my head (having considered going into art book publishing as an alternative to fine art insurance)- Phaidon, Harry N. Abrams, Watson-Guptil, and Taschen, in that order, unless I am applying to a job.  Then it's whoever it is that I am applying to.

But when it comes to urban planning books it is more of a scattergun approach when it comes to favorite titles, especially as my interests are so varied- a quick list of favorites would be Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Economic Development by Joan Fitzgerald (Oxford), Next Stop Reloville: Inside America's New Rootless Professional Class by: Peter T. Kilborn (Times Books), Fostering Sustainable Behavior: an Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing by: Doug Mckenzie-Mohr and William Smith (New Society Publishers), the American City: What Works, What Doesn't by: Alexander Garvin (McGraw-Hill Professional), Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us by Tom Vanderbilt (Vintage), and anything by Witold Rybczynski (who is published under Viking, Oxford, and other publishers' imprints) and most of these aren't urban planning books, per se, but deal with aspects of the built environment.

However, there is one publisher, whose work I unfailingly enjoy, and would enjoy more if their average retail price wasn't about $60- yikes! They're called Wiley Publishers for short, long version is John Wiley & Sons, Inc., You may be familiar with their "For Dummies" series. Yeah, I thought it was a different publisher too, like Random House. Guess not.

The reason they are the focus of this post is because they have an office in Ames, Iowa, of all places. Ames-?! which is 45 minutes away from where my parents live! Ames, not exactly a hotbed of cultural activity. The Iowa Writers Workshop, which I thought was more like one of those weekend affairs that Erica Jong, bookended by Jonathan Saffron Foer and Jonathan Franzen attend and self-congratulate one another on their earnings and how they're going to spend their latest million, is in Iowa City (and is also a grad program- oops.)

Wiley's headquarters is in Hoboken, New Jersey, land of super thick New Joizee accents, if the stars of TLC's Cake Boss, are any indicator. Neither are cities that I would pick as my number one destination spot. But I love me some publishing. Yes, I do acknowledge the irony of that incredibly grammatically poor sentence. And driving 45 minutes up the freeway to get my foot in the door is a lot cheaper than flying across the country. Or worse, moving back in with one's parents, yes Dad, haha it would be "worse" for you- ha ha, than living in Iowa.

Hello Wiley- I have publicly declared my love for you! What are you going to do about it?! I would like to say that I can't wait to snap up Water Centric Sustainable Communities: Planning, Retrofitting, and Building the Next Urban Environment. But at $130 I'm going to have to wait for my employee discount ;-) 

The 3 P's- planning, politics, and policy- good luck untangling them!

In an effort to streamline my look today I inadvertently locked myself out of my place. Let me explain.

I possess an army green messenger bag given to me by my school as a hey thanks for coming here. However, I never use it because I don't like how it distributes its weight.

But today I was going to my internship and I was going to be carrying a few items, but not a lot. Therefore, I decided that I didn't want to bring my backpack that makes me look like I'm going hiking up K2. But I had more stuff than my purse would carry. Hence, the messenger bag.

Unfortunately, I always stuff my keys into a side pocket of my ever-present backpack, a fact I forgot as I was rushing out the door today. I partially blame the earliness of the hour. Those who know me know that I don't function very well before 10 AM. Today was no exception.

In a twist of fate all of my work that needed to be done for class tomorrow was a group effort and was done early- not before I dragged a classmate to my place to do our work as I thought that it would be a more comfortable environment, not realizing that it would also be inaccessible.

Therefore, not having any pressing work at the moment- OK I could read for a few of my classes in advance of next week, but where is the fun in that? I have decided to seize this opportunity to reflect a little bit on my future.

Every couple of months I write down what my interests are in urban planning and see if they change. For the past few sessions they have remained the same.

But as of late, I don't know if it can be attributed to an overwhelming amount of work, being so close to school for the past two weeks, without time to go somewhere else, or not getting to connect and check in with my friends as much as I did last year, or just second year blues, but I am growing fatigued of how intrinsically- and how untangleable- planning is to politics and policy.

To the uninitiated this would seem like a good thing on a cursory glance. If politicians support planning then you can always find someone to back you, right? I wish. When I say politics sometimes this can apply that, at least in L.A., to the fact that owing to its size, we have 13 districts, which include 13 council people, each of who is gunning for their share of the pie, for themselves and their constituents. Or again, to cite LA, and California in general, due to the way our legislation, citizens can vote on anything that goes through the legislature, which means that a "good" concept, can be killed, if there is enough weight behind the opposing side, and their lobbyists. And in LA almost everything gets voted on, even in planning. Here City Council has the final say.

Contrary to what some people would like to believe, planning does not occur in a vacuum. City Council passes ordinances, Zoning Administrators, who are politically appointed, approve or deny variances regarding commercial and residential properties. This does provide a check-and-balance system, but also can stymy some innovative ideas just because someone doesn't like it.

And planning is also tied to policy. Planners rarely, if ever, get to stand up and declare "we should abolish Euclidian zoning!" I'll spare you the boring details of what that is. Suffice to say it is why we have residential areas, commercial areas, and industrial areas. No, everything has to go through a process, which almost always involves research and data and politics.

Eh. I've had enough. 

I Know a Little Bit About a Lot of Things, But I Don't Know Enough About You. OK, well read this book!

I was humming the song, "I Know a Little Bit About a Lot of Things, But I Don't Know Enough About You" to which a close friend replied, "I could definitely say that about you."

Well, you want to know about me? And how I see the world? Then read Next Stop, Reloville by Peter T. Kilborn. The excellent book grew out of an article Mr. Kilborn wrote for the NYT entitled, "The 5-Bedroom, 6-Figure Rootless Lifestyle," which my dad posted on his blog, and which I ate up.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE6D61F39F932A35755C0A9639C8B63

So one can imagine my surprise and delight to discover that Mr. Kilborn had written a book on the subject.

I tore through it engulfing it in a few days (one of the perks of a long bus ride to my internship at the City of Los Angeles)

Mr. Kilborn is officially next to David Brooks, author of Bobos in Paradise and On Paradise Drive, both highly recommended not only for their incisive social commentary, but also their fantastic humor (when I speak in the plural I mean Kilborn and Brooks and Brooks' work.)

KIlborn is a (retired) journalist by trade and it shows in his writing style. Each chapter reads like a very short story (or a long newspaper article, depending on your POV) focused on a theme- relo spouses, corporate recruiting, etc., and a family (or several families.) A highly skilled journalist he seeks out viewpoints from a variety of what he calls "relos," or people whose career advancement is dictated by moving around the country (see also definition of the Mech family, i.e., my family)

There are some families that have very young children, some families with pre-teen or teenage children, a few career relos, and a couple retired or empty nesters. He is also diligent in not just highlighting the soccer mom types (like the Link family in the NYT article, who are also the first chapter of the book), but also the families that have travelled overseas, the kids who thrive on moving, the families on a verge of divorce due to so many stressful moves, the man who lost custody of his daughters due to his desire to move higher up on the career ladder, and the people who seem almost insatiable in their desire to do just a little better, to have a little bit more of the fat money cake.

It's interesting that I felt such relief that there were other people who went through the same thing as me- whenever I moved I was always "the new kid" and some years, the only new kid. Yet I also felt incredibly alone. I suppose it was dredging up old memories and old heartache, the process of starting over, again, of putting yourself out there, trying to make connections with people.

Kilborn makes an excellent point saying that "The Yons' roots are their kids and their memories." (Kilborn, 130)

If you asked my parents, where is home? They may say Wausau, WI, where they have a lot of friends and family, but they haven't lived there in 10 years, they may be at a loss. They've moved several times since I moved out and even since my brother moved out four years after me. Each move I always feel chips away at one's sense of permanence and belonging to one particular place.

However, as Kilborn points out, family relos, are often examples of a by-gone era- the nuclear family- complete with breadwinner dad, stay-at-home mom (for many relo spouses due to their partners' constant relocation it is very difficult to try to establish a career so many raise their children but do not hold down a monetary-based job), and often several children.

When people ask me what is it like? I tell them that it is very freeing not to be tied to any one place, never leaving, never exploring the world because you are stuck in your microcosm. At the same time it's very hard to answer "where are you from?" Because I don't really have a place called home. At school I now tell people that I'm from Chicago. But when I go back to Chicago it doesn't feel like home anymore even though I moved away only two years ago. So much has changed in the Windy City, the rhythm is different and I can't catch the beat.

I'd like to say that Charlotte feels like a spiritual home, but then people might ask me about specific places there that I like and how are the people and I'd only get flustered and have to correct them that I'm never lived there properly. It just feels like home.

It also saddened me that so many families buy bigger and bigger houses as a substitute form of comfort. But that people buy cookie-cutter homes because it's really easy to resell a brand-new cookie cutter rather than an older home, which has more "character." Just ask my mom, she'll tell ya. And that these people feel as alienated as I did, but the nature of their job dictates constant relocation, but guidance on how to make even short-term friends is non-existent.

But like Evita Peron said in the musical, "Evita," "Don't cry for me [Argentina]" Moving around has been very freeing as I said above. I've been able to really get to know different places in the U.S., meet new people, learn about new cultures and values, and these experiences have made me who I am.

Given the choice, I may not have moved some places at some times, but other experiences I wouldn't change for the world. That may not answer my friend's question in its entirety, but it sure is a place to start. Being a relo kid is definitely a big chunk of who I am.

Also, Kilborn's book is so good I snapped up a copy on Amazon, partially to pass on to my parents, partially because highlighting library books is frowned upon. :)