MTO, Health, and New Urbanism

It's great to see so much press coverage around the publication of "Neighborhoods, Obesity, and Diabetes — A Randomized Social Experiment," an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about the health gains made by women who moved to low-poverty communities under the Moving To Opportunity Program. Here's a summary from CNN: "between 2008 and 2010, Ludwig and his colleagues followed up with 3,186 women who participated in the [MTO] program. . . . Of the women who stayed in their original neighborhoods, 20% had blood-sugar levels consistent with diabetes and 18% had a BMI of at least 40 (the unofficial cutoff point for morbid obesity). These rates were not measurably different among the women who received unrestricted vouchers. By contrast, just 16% of the women who moved to low-poverty areas had diabetes and just 14% were morbidly obese."

However, one thing that no article we have seen has mentioned is how this data flies in the face of so much New Urbanist propaganda about how living in the suburbs makes people fat. In the MTO program, moves from high-poverty communities to low-poverty ones typically (though not always) meant moves from denser, more urban neighborhoods to less dense, less walkable, more suburban ones. So what is it about the new environments that accounts for the health benefits? Jens Ludwig, lead author of the study is quoted in CNN saying that the move "changed a bunch of things at one time for these families, so it's hard to tease out exactly what made a big difference for them," but that greater access to healthy foods, a safer environment more conducive to outdoor exercise, and lower levels of psychological stress all "seem like plausible explanations."

Jerold Kayden on Occupy Wall Street

In the media coverage of Occupy Wall Street, it has been great to see our former professor Jerold S. Kayden emerge as the go-to expert on publicly-owned private space. We first met Jerold in his excellent "Public Private Development" Class--which we all took at the GSD in 2000--and we subsequently helped him develop a brand around his then nascent "Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space" organization, which was founded after the publication of his exhaustive book on the topic. As most supporters of the Occupy movement know by now, one of the brilliant things about it is that by occupying Zuccotti Park, the occupiers occupied a privately-owned public space that, unlike a city-owned public space, can draft and enforce its own rules of operation (the city only requires that these rules be "reasonable"). Zuccotti Park--by almost any standard, one of the better privately-owned public spaces in the city--had very lax rules: one couldn't skateboard, roller skate, or bike through the park, but until October 13 of this year, there were no rules prohibiting camping or lying down.

As Kayden writes in his op-ed piece in the Times, "The rules remain unenforced; no one is sure what will happen next."

Occupy Wall Street

There is so much we'd like to say about Occupy Wall Street, which we find inspiring, exciting, and essential, and which we support 100%. Among other things, it's a victory for public space, and a reminder of how real democracy is impossible without it. Fortunately, someone with a much bigger audience than this blog has written a really thoughtful piece that hits the nail on the head, and says a lot of the things that this blog might have said if we were better at this. Michael Kimmelman's "In Protest, The Power of Place" is a must read. Seriously: follow the link and read it now!

WETLAND

Landscapes of Privilege by James and Nancy Duncan has been on our reading list for a while now. A book about "how the aesthetics of physical landscapes are fully enmeshed in producing the American class system" that shows "how the physical presentation of a place carries with it a range of markers of inclusion and exclusion" is hard for us to resist! We finally had a chance to read it recently and we weren't disappointed. There's a lot we could say about it, but for now, we'd like to point out at least one new entry in the Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion that was inspired by it: WETLAND. Writing about Bedford, NY, the Duncans write that "The anti-development activists found that by the 1970s their best arsenal came from the environmental movement and its vocabulary of wetlands and biodiversity." According to the Duncans, as the town started experiencing development pressure, residents suddenly became concerned about wetlands: by essentially feigning an interest in the health of the earth, residents could be exclusionary while seeming progressive.

Affordable Housing in Woodstock

There's a great article in the New York Times today about affordable housing in Woodstock, NY. At issue is a 53-unit affordable housing complex called Woodstock Commons that is stirring up a lot of controversy, despite having broken ground earlier this summer. Opponents, trying carefully to deflect accusations of Nimbyism, cited practical objections based on Woodstock’s small size, quaint downtown, and aging infrastructure. "Among their complaints: the project is too big, it is at a dangerous bend for traffic and the site should remain green space."
Well, it certainly sounds like Nimbyism to us. The Times quotes the Town Supervisor, who seems to tell it like it is: “Nobody would tell you they don’t want these people in our town. . . . Instead, they talk about the effect on the quality of life, ramping up the costs of services and those kind of things. But there’s a joke in town that the reason The Woodstock Times costs a dollar is because people don’t want change. People come here and they think they have an investment in the town being a certain way.”

The controversy surrounding Woodstock Commons is in many ways analogous to the controversy surrounding the ongoing housing desegregation suit in Westchester, where "limousine liberals" are organizing against court-mandated affordable housing along some of the same grounds. I don't think there are many limousine liberals in Woodstock, but the Woodstockers' claim that they are acting in the interest of Mother Earth bears a resemblance to the sudden concerns about wetland protection that emerged in Westchester communities like Bedford in the 1970s (read James and Nancy Duncan's excellent Landscapes of Power for more on this topic).

The fact remains that, as the article points out, Woodstock real estate prices are "increasingly out of the reach of the humbler classes." Does anything more really need to be said?

STOOP

A Facebook friend just posted this amazing picture:

It reminded us: how cool is Sesame Street? How open, inclusive, and diverse?

Not coincidentally, a lot of the Sesame Street action takes place on the STOOP, one of the most basic entries in the Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion. It's too easy to fall into Jane Jacobs here, but really, what better place exists for comfortable, spontaneous encounter? As many have pointed out by now, Sesame Street was first conceived in the late 1960s, a time when the adjective "urban" had begun to collect some of its negative connotations. To successfully pitch a show that focused on openness, inclusion, diversity, and other urban attributes must have not been easy.

Architecture for Everyone at the BMW Guggenheim Lab

Thanks to everyone who made it out to “Architecture for Everyone” at the BMW Guggenheim Lab. Thanks, too, to our amazing panel, which included Andrew Kahrl, Marquette University (on beach tags), Amy Lavine, Government Law Center at Albany Law School (on community benefit agreements), Kaja Kuhl, Columbia GSAPP (on immigrant recruitment), Beryl Satter, Rutgers University-Newark (on contract selling and credit), Meredith Tenhoor, Princton (on fire hydrants), and Damon Rich, Center for Urban Pedagogy, City of Newark (on practicing urban design in a post-great-migration city). The event was a nice preview of The Arsenal of Exclusion & Inclusion book, which, as readers of this blog know by now, looks at 101 “weapons” that bring people together and keep people apart in our cities. The pictures below aren’t so good, but check the BMW Guggenheim Lab’s website in the coming days for a video of the event.

FOOD AND DRINK BAN, "RESIDENTS ONLY" SIGN, LANDSCAPING

There's an excellent article in the New York Times today about beach access in New Jersey. Among other things, the article reveals the extent to which access to the beach is protected by a sub-arsenal of exclusion. We've already written about how FIRE HYDRANTS, PARKING, FIRE ZONES, and GATES are used to restrict access to beaches, but these are by no means the only weapons in the beach sub-arsenal. Here's the article: " Many places welcome visitors and their business, but for generations, some property owners, neighborhoods and towns have tried to stem that tide with scarce or time-limited parking, claims of private ownership, bans on food and drinks, and paths to the sand that are few in number or disguised. The wealthy Elberon section of Long Branch has plenty of beach access routes, but some can be hard to discern. One path from Garfield Terrace is fenced off, with a “residents only” sign, though people who know better ignore the sign and go through the gate. Adams Street, a nearby cul-de-sac, reaches a dead end about 50 yards from the beach, and the remaining distance is landscaped, looking like private property. The shrubs nearly obscure a small blue sign, marking it as public access."

So to the arsenal of exclusion we can add:

FOOD AND DRINK BAN

"RESIDENTS ONLY" SIGN

LANDSCAPING

Westchester Housing Desegregation Case

There's a great article in Salon about the Westchester housing desegregation case. For those who are unfamiliar with this important case, this article is a great primer. In sum: "Westchester is defying a landmark federal court order to desegregate housing in its whitest and wealthiest towns, prompting civil rights activists to return to court. The federal government has allowed wealthy municipalities to keep the poor and black out for decades, and municipal leaders nationwide are watching closely to see if the Obama administration forces the county to comply."

The Museum of Fortress Architecture

Tourists flock to visit Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Have a look at what protects them from the city just behind the harbor:







It's so easy to beat up on Baltimore for this sort of thing, but Pratt Street really is like a museum of fortress architecture, with few doors, imposing, windowless concrete facades, wide, one-way streets, half a dozen skywalks, and enough bollards to derail an invasion of tanks.

COMMUNITY CARE FACILITIES ORDINANCE

We somehow stumbled upon this heartfelt op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Daily News that made us aware of an important issue: The City of Los Angeles is considering an ordinance to outzone sober-living homes: "recovery homes" consisting mostly of people who have completed inpatient drug treatment programs. As the author of the op-ed writes, the proposed "Community Care Facilities Ordinance" would declare thousands of single-family homes in Los Angeles "boarding houses," and thereby ban them in single-family neighborhoods: "The ill-fated logic is that such uses are not appropriate for single-family zones and that these homes belong in multifamily areas." We will certainly be following this story. In the meantime, best of luck to those fighting this ridiculous piece of legislation. .

SCREEN PLANTING STRIP

We were flipping through the excellent The Suburb Reader today, and noticed this amazing 1948 subdivision plan:

The caption reads: Proposed Subdivision Plan for Urban Villas, 1948. This subdivision plan, prepared by the FHA for a black veterans' group in Atlanta, bears the hallmarks of segregated suburban planning in the South. To secure white support, black civic leaders accepted and even emphasized the fifty-foot 'screen planting strip' that separated the development from white neighbors.

This is of course analogous to the infamous concrete WALL that developers of an African American subdivision in Detroit had to build to secure FHA financing. Both are classic examples of the resourcefulness of exclusion. Note however, the presence on the subdivision plan of an inclusionary measure: the CUL DE SAC SHORTCUT.

"NO NEGROS ALLOWED" SIGN

This is pretty amazing: a man named Mark Prior posted a "NO NEGROS ALLOWED" SIGN on his Milwaukee store after "he claimed he had problems with Black people in his past and wanted to make a policy against them." The article goes on to say that "he claims that he has the right to discriminate."

QUESTIONNAIRE

Interboro is currently preparing a study of the marketing of private, master planned communities in the United States. For this, we are trying to collect marketing brochures from every master planned community built or planned in the United States between 2006 and 2008. (This hasn't been easy, for any number of reasons.) A preliminary analysis of the brochures suggests an astonishing diversification since the 1980s of both "product lines" and the marketing strategies. One of the newer, more interesting marketing strategies we have come across a few times is the questionnaire.

Private Mountain Communities is an Asheville, NC based company that describes itself as a "trusted authority on Western North Carolina living." A broker of sorts, Private Mountain Communities "matches families with communities that complement their personal taste and lifestyle." Two things stand out about this company. One, they have a storefront--sorry, a "state of the art Discovery Showroom"--in downtown Asheville where you can consult with "independent community advisors," preview community brochures, DVD's and "use interactive explorations tools" to find the community that is right for you. Second, on their website, there is something called a "Community Finder:" an application that "guides you through an easy questionnaire that analyzes your unique interests and lifestyle preferences, such as architectural tastes and preferred amenities, to produce a short list of communities that are right for you." A video on the website underlines the questionnaire's science, stating that the questionnaire is "an algorithm that really takes you down the right path so that you are getting into a subset where you fit. A concept that represents all the communities in this area in a unbiased way.”

The questionnaire is actually more benign than it sounds, asking questions like: "Which of the following area activities are essential to your decision to purchase property?" and "Which of the following on-site amenities are essential to your decision to purchase property?"

Something much less benign is described by Bill Bishop in his book The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. Bishop--who was a contributor to the NAI exhibition--writes about a questionnaire that is given to prospective homebuyers in an Orange County, CA development called "Ladera Ranch" whose questions try to get at the homebuyers' values (for example Do you “like to experience exotic people and places?” Or, do you believe “extremists and radicals should be banned from running for public office?”). Here is Bishop: "The Ladera Ranch developers built one section of their subdivision for those who see the Earth as a “living system.” (It’s called “Terramor” and features bamboo floors, photovoltaic cells and, according to the developer, houses that 'might have a courtyard that conceals the front door...kind of cozy and nest-like.') Across the way is a community for those the developer labeled 'Winners.' In Covenant Hills, houses are more colonial than craftsman."

Especially in the second example, the questionnaire is one of those ingenious weapons that, like the "exclusionary amenity," creates a kind of self-sorting. It's one of those weapons that so clearly violates the spirit of the Fair Housing Act, but that seems to do nothing wrong.

PARENTAL ESCORT POLICY

We love the Atlantic Terminal. Really, we do. It ain't pretty, and it is a mall, with of the trappings being a mall brings, but it has a lot of the things that good public space should have, including, accessibility, affordability, diversity, and lots of places to sit. We were more than a little upset then, to read this article in the New York Times about their "Parental Escort Policy," which stipulates that "groups of four or more people under 21 years old and unaccompanied by a parent are not allowed to linger."

Forest City Ratner, why do you have to be such a jerk? It's hard enough to defend your mall as quality public space (something that we often do, by the way). Can you reconsider? Are the kids grouped together in four really so bad?