Suburbs - August 2006:
SUBURBS: Exurbanization and Gentrification: How the Two Patterns Have Been Linked Since the Beginning of Urban History
By Robert Bruegmann
Most conventional histories of postwar urban America focus on the decline of the central city, as neighborhoods emptied out, and the rise of the suburban periphery, as highways, factories…
PHILADELPHIA: The Cultural Contradictions of the Creative Age
By Daniel Brook
As I stood cramped into a rush hour MUNI bus inching down San Francisco’s Divisadero Street, I heard someone calling out, “Dan? Dan?” Considering I live in Philadelphia and my first name i…
PHILADELPHIA: Gambling on Philadelphia's Future: Can Casinos Fit into a Big City Downtown?
By Joanne Aitken, Harris Steinberg, and Elise Vider
Philadelphia doesn’t need to become the next Atlantic City. Even without casinos, Philadelphia has had plenty of success. Over the last ten years, this city of 1.5 million has experienced an urb…
REVIEW: Steven Malanga, The New New Left: How American Politics Works Today
By Mackenzie Baris
Some of the biggest battles in our cities in recent years have been fought over living wage laws, public funding for projects like stadiums and convention centers, and the privatization of city…(and much more)
Fast Company identifies the fifteen top up-and-coming hubs for creative workers."For the first time, people aspire--even expect--to do work they love and to live in a community where they can be themselves. At the same time, the world of work has become increasingly temporary and insecure. As a result, talent is shifting to regions that offer dense concentrations of other talented people, tolerance of differences, and a great quality of life.
The country's epicenters of such talent--San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles--are well-known. To find out which up-and-coming places show the highest rates of creative-class growth--the country's truly fast cities--we drafted Florida and his crack team of data crunchers, led by Kevin Stolarick, assistant professor with the Information Systems Program at Carnegie Mellon University.
They identified the seven U.S. cities with populations between 1 million and 5 million and the three cities between 400,000 and 1 million that have offered the most potent mix of talent, technology, and tolerance in recent years. To top it off, we found a member of the creative class in each emerging city to tell us what's appealing about where they work and live." >Link
It's surprisingly simple.Over the past 30 years Project for Public Spaces has evaluated more than 1,000 public spaces, and informally investigated tens of thousands more. From all this we have discovered that most great places--whether a grand downtown plaza or humble neighborhood park--share four key qualities:
Paying attention to these qualities can help you evaluate the public spaces in your own community, and make the changes that can transform them into great places. >Link
- It is accessible and well-connected to other important places in the area.
- The space is comfortable and projects a good image.
- People are drawn to participate in activities there.
- It is a sociable place where people like to gather, visiting it again and again.
By William J. Kole
Associated Press
VIENNA, Austria -- Vienna's prestigious Leopold Museum is usually a pretty buttoned-down place, but on Friday, some of the nudes in its marble galleries were for real.
Scores of naked or scantily clad people wandered the museum, lured by an offer of free entry to "The Naked Truth," an exhibition of early 1900s erotic art, if they showed up wearing just a swimsuit -- or nothing at all.
With a heat wave sweeping much of Europe, pushing temperatures into the mid-90s in Vienna, the museum decided that making the most of its cool, climate-controlled space would spur interest in the show.
"We find a naked body every bit as beautiful as a clothed one," said Elisabeth Leopold, who founded the museum with her husband, Rudolf. "If they came only out of lust, we have to accept that. We stand for the truth."
Peter Weinhaeupl, the Leopold's commercial director, said the goal was twofold -- to help people beat the heat while creating a mini-scandal reminiscent of the way the art works by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Oskar Kokoschka and others shocked the public when they were unveiled a century ago.
"We wanted to give people a chance to cool off, and bring nakedness into the open," he said. "It's a bit of an experiment. Egon Schiele was a young and wild person in his day. He'd want to be here."
Most of those who showed up in little or no attire Friday opted for swimsuits, but a few hardy souls dared to bare more. Among them was Bettina Huth of Stuttgart, Germany, who roamed the exhibition wearing only sandals and a black bikini bottom.
Although she used a program at one point to shield herself from a phalanx of TV cameras, Huth, 52, said she didn't understand what all the fuss was about.
"I go into the steam bath every week, so I'm used to being naked," she said. "I think there's a double morality, especially in America. We lived in California for two years, and I found it strange that my children had to cover themselves up at the beach when they were only 3 or 4 years old. That's ridiculous."
For years, the Austrian capital has been known for a small but lively nudist colony on the Donauinsel, an island in the middle of the Danube River where people disrobe, often startling unsuspecting joggers and cyclists who happen upon them.
Overwhelmingly Roman Catholic Austria has always been somewhat more conservative than many other European countries. The Viennese were scandalized when native art nouveau masters like Klimt -- best known for his sensuous "The Kiss" and the subject of an upcoming film starring John Malkovich -- began producing works some critics panned as "indecency," "artistic self-pollution" and borderline pornography.
Why cities should cherish -- and support -- their public marketsMaisonneuve urban issues columnist takes a look at public markets, arguing that they are catalysts for urban development, economic prosperity and social integration. "Ultimately," he writes, "well-managed markets can be the beating heart of any city--if city leaders have the foresight and good sense to embrace their potential.">Link
The Problem:
The industrialized nations made a terrible mistake when they turned to the automobile as an instrument of improved urban mobility. The car brought with it major unanticipated consequences for urban life and has become a serious cause of environmental, social, and aesthetic problems in cities. [...]
The Solution:
The urban automobile can only be supplanted if a better alternative is available. What would happen if we designed a city to work without any cars? Would anyone want to live in such a city? Does it make social, economic, and esthetic sense? Is it possible to be free of the automobile while keeping the rapid and convenient mobility it once offered? >Link
The healthiest city dwellers in America live in San Jose, Calif., according to a new study released by Bert Sperling's BestPlaces and multivitamin-maker Centrum. The Centrum Healthiest Cities Study is the first-ever comprehensive "health report card" of the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S. that’s based on key factors including health status, nutrition and exercise, plus mental health and life balance, which contribute to overall well-being. >Link
New Orleans is considered the unhealthiest city in America, according to a new study released by Bert Sperling's BestPlaces and multivitamin-maker Centrum. The Centrum Healthiest Cities Study is the first-ever comprehensive "health report card" of the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S. that’s based on key factors including health status, nutrition and exercise, plus mental health and life balance, which also contribute to overall well-being. >LInk
Using the principles of Placemaking, it's entirely possible to undertake transportation projects--involving foot, bike, transit and even automobile traffic--that bring life to a place rather than take it away. >Link
As the president of the Project for Public Spaces, which is based in Manhattan’s West Village, [Fred Kent] has for the past 30 years been a buoyant and unremitting advocate for creating outdoor spaces in which people like to linger. “It’s just basic human common sense,” he says. “We need places that people feel comfortable in and connect to, that they can be affectionate in, smile, laugh, engage, tell stories. It’s about bliss, really.” >Link
More than 40 percent of the towns surveyed for a new report by the London-based New Economics Foundation are so overrun by chain stores that they have lost their local identity and become little more than "clone towns." >Link
The alley revival from Scottsdale to Buckeye and Surprise to Gilbert is part of a design movement called New Urbanism. It aims for traditional neighborhoods, with nearby shops and parks, a variety of homes with front porches, and garages built along alleys.The idea is to create a place where residents can walk or bike to the market and visit with neighbors on the porch or in parks near their homes. >Link
8th annual readers' choice poll lauds perennial favorites, boosts new localesBy the Staff of AmericanStyle Magazine
No doubt about it: the Big Apple is hard to beat.
For the fifth time in the eight years of AmericanStyle magazine’s Top 25 Arts Destinations readers poll, New York has rocketed to the top of the list. And why not? It’s classy, it’s cultured, it’s street-smart, and it’s got enough creative bling to entice traveling arts enthusiasts into its five boroughs over and over and over again.
Big, brawny Chicago maintains its No. 2 slot again this year, boosted in part by the excitement the Windy City has generated with the opening of Millennium Park, a $475 million extravaganza next to The Art Institute of Chicago and a hop, skip and street crossing away from the lakefront. >Link
More young urban professionals are forgoing square footage for eco-friendly homes. By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore | Correspondent of The Christian Science MonitorPORTLAND, ORE – Bryan and Chris Higgins didn't set out to save the world. But one look at their home, built on a tiny lot with tall windows and radiant floor heat that result in low utility bills, and it's obvious the young couple has a mission: to leave the lightest footprint possible on mother earth's soil.
Mr. Higgins, an architect, and Mrs. Higgins, a civil engineer, are proud to own just one car and walk to work every day, dropping their daughter Frances off at child care along the way. They love their energy-efficient kitchen appliances and feel fortunate to live in a place that cools so well they don't need an air conditioner, even on Portland's 90-degree days.
The Higgins are at the forefront of a boom in green building. >Link
Mario Osava, Inter Press Service (IPS)RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 26 (IPS) - The Brazilian minister of culture, renowned singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil, has a new passion: the creative industries, which he believes can play a key role in boosting the economies of developing countries.
His enthusiasm for the economic potential of cultural and other intellectual property products is reflected in his determination for Brazil to serve as the headquarters for an International Centre for the Creative Industries (ICCI), to be established by the
United Nations in 2006. >Link
For St. Louis, Great Expectations but a Slow-Rolling Renaissance
By KIRK JOHNSON
April 8, 2005
ST. LOUIS JOURNAL
ST. LOUIS, April 5 - People here joke that the sidewalks get rolled up at night as workers flee to the suburbs, but through the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament that ended on Monday, the sidewalks got washed instead. St. Louis primped and spruced and papered its empty buildings with signs about the rosy days to come and got its television close-up in front of millions of viewers around the world.
But much of the city's upbeat message was intended for consumption at home, where urban pioneers like John and Mary Kelly have staked their fortunes on making the renaissance real. The couple opened Kelly's Deli four years ago on what was then a nearly abandoned block of downtown, and they still have great expectations because of the conversion of vacant buildings into loft-style apartments in their neighborhood and the escalating real-estate prices that are drawing investors.
But for St. Louis, which lost half its population in the decades after World War II, and for the Kellys, the good times still remain mostly unrealized. The basketball crowds gave a nice jolt to the cash register, they said. And the event put as much as $60 million into the local economy over four days of revelry, economic development officials said. But by Tuesday it was business as usual.
"I don't know how long we can hold on," Mr. Kelly said.
The calculus of rehabilitating any wounded city is partly about experimenting until something that works is found. St. Louis is pinning its hopes on architecture, specifically its stock of glorious old buildings that now stand like monuments to a vanished economy of manufacturing might. But selling the portrait of that recovery, city officials and development leaders say, is complicated by history and myth and the deep divisions in Missouri politics, and to a certain extent by the even trickier terrain of sexual orientation.
The city is an island of Democratic voters in a sea of increasingly conservative rural and suburban ones. It suffers from a reputation as a dangerous place, which tends to keep many outsiders from venturing in. And the recovery effort has partly been led by members of a group that is not popular in many parts of Missouri: gay men and lesbians who have renovated neighborhoods and opened new businesses in recent years.
In August, voters across the state overwhelming voted yes on an amendment to the State Constitution banning same-sex marriage. St. Louis, in a lonely dissent, voted no.
The ongoing pitch to the rest of Missouri is that St. Louis's diversity is exactly what makes the city exciting, said James A. Cloar, the president and chief executive of the Downtown St. Louis Partnership, a civic development group.
"People outside the city have got to buy in," Mr. Cloar said.
Many low-income residents outside downtown, meanwhile, will probably have to wait longer than the Kellys to see any benefit from the resurgence, advocates for the poor say.
Along Washington Avenue, where loft redevelopment is concentrated, the sounds of hammers and saws filled the air on a recent afternoon. Three new businesses have opened on one block in just the last few weeks, including Washington Avenue Post, which combines a coffee bar, an Internet café and an office supply operation.
A mile or two away in the city's mostly black North End, the scars of St. Louis's long fall seem unhealed, with block after block of sagging brick houses.
The city's population, which was more than 850,000 in 1950, had fallen to 348,000 people by 2000, with many of those who left now living in the city's ring of suburbs. Unemployment is about 6.5 percent for the metropolitan area, but far higher in the North End, residents say.
"If you truly create a new industry, there will be jobs," said the Rev. Bill Hutchison, a Jesuit priest and the founder of the Northside Community Center, a nonprofit group. "What's happening now is not designed to hit the low-income people. It's designed to hit the mobile, professional, upper-income class."
But optimism can be an unpredictable thing, with consequences of its own, other people say. And there are hints that St. Louis might be regaining some of its old swagger.
Asked whether the city might suffer if Missourians came to see St. Louis as too different in its politics or too accepting of diversity, one senior city official said the risk of opprobrium was really the other way around - that potential newcomers, drawn to a resurgent St. Louis, might not be so keen on the rest of the state.
"I'm not so worried that they won't tolerate us," said Jeff Rainford, the chief of staff to Mayor Francis G. Slay, referring to Missouri residents outside the city. "I am a little afraid that the folks we want to come won't tolerate them."
The Art Underfoot competition was launched in April 2004 and culminated in an exhibition at the Roundhouse Community Centre from July 18 to 24. The competition invited anyone who lives, works, or goes to school in Vancouver to submit design ideas for new manhole covers, the lids that mark the entrances to our underground network of sewers. The Public Art Program received more than 640 entries from Vancouverites of all walks of life and ages. >Link
Over the past few years, people have grown accustomed at looking to Seattle (and the Pacific Northwest in general) as a source of new ideas and inspiration. Grunge rock, Microsoft, Starbuck's coffee and amazon.com have all sprung out of Seattle into the center of American and global culture. In less publicized ways, the northwest region has also become a laboratory for new ideas about how we think about our places. Pike Place Market is widely celebrated as a national symbol about the possibilities of public spaces, and Seattle, Vancouver, and particularly Portland are looked to as beacons for new ideas in urban livability.So it should come as no surprise that the first comprehensive meeting about launching a movement around the ideas of Placemaking should take place near Seattle, with a sizable number of Seattle participants. >Link
Mayor Eddie Perez has an ambitious plan to make Hartford a free wireless technology zone, one of the first in the country. It would mean free Internet access across the city. But industry could stand in the way. >Link
Our keynote speaker is City Futures Authority Charles Landry, and he will be joined by community leaders from both sides of the Atlantic to explore the many facets of urban regeneration.The symposium will include interactive panel discussions and dynamic roundtable discussions addressing such topics as: the Role of Government - Beyond Downtown - Preservation vs. Innovation - Education - Entrepreneurial Spirit - Urban Policy - Winners and Losers - Civic Culture - the New Economy - and more. >Link
For nearly four years, Young Professionals of Milwaukee has been making Milwaukee a cooler place for under-40 workers who already live here. Now it's adding services to help employers recruit that demographic, too.YPM, the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, and the Institute for Diversity Education and Leadership at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are collaborating to develop a "regional recruitability index." >Link
A recent proposal by Senate Republicans in Iowa to eliminate the state income tax for residents under the age of thirty has brought the issue of the out-migration of young, educated adults once again to the forefront. In recognizing that brain drain leads to the loss of necessary skills for global competitiveness and economic development, policymakers across the nation are responding with innovative ideas. While the Iowa Senate Republicans have dropped their proposal, a number of other states are pursuing new approaches. >Link
On the surface, Baton Rouge's Gas, Food & Lodging Music Festival doesn't seem like much at all -- a handful of live music venues attaching a name and a logo to a few weeks worth of shows.But the idea behind "GFL Fest" is a bit more subversive. >Link
Project for Public Spaces invites you to two separate workshops, "How to Turn a Place Around" and "How to Create Successful Public Markets" on May 19-20, 2005 in New York City.
http://www.pps.org/info/ppsnews/httapa_training_course
HOW TO TURN A PLACE AROUND
Is a two-day workshop designed for professionals and non-professionals who help shape towns and cities -- from highway engineers and real estate developers to community garden advocates and housing specialists. Based on PPS's 30 years of experience in placemaking, and inspired by our popular book, "How to Turn a Place Around," the course shows step-by-step our unique approach to revitalization.
During the course, participants work in small teams to observe and analyze places in Greenwich Village and Battery Park City*, two contrasting areas of New York City. The sites will be used to illustrate complexities in making places, encourage a user's point of view, and provide insight into how public spaces function. (*Site subject to change.)
The registration fee covers two days of tuition, including a neighborhood tour, in-depth presentations and discussions, on-site evaluation, case studies, a copy of How to Turn a Place Around, and training support materials. Light lunch and refreshments will be provided on both Thursday and Friday. There is a reception Thursday evening (included) and an optional dinner Friday night (please note the dinner is a change from previous workshops and is not included in the fee.)
To register and for more information, please visit the workshop webpage, http://www.pps.org/info/ppsnews/httapa_training_course, or contact Kathleen Zeigenfuss at 212-620-5660, kzeigenfuss@pps.org.
http://www.pps.org/info/ppsnews/markets_training_course
HOW TO CREATE SUCCESSFUL MARKETS
Is a two-day workshop led by our own public market experts Steve Davies and David O'Neil. Cities and towns across the US are rediscovering the benefits of public markets.
At this workshop, you will:
Learn how to start a market in your neighborhood or town;
Look at case studies and explore the market planning process, including goal-setting, concept development, economic feasibility, management, site selection and design;
Visit and analyze some of New York's most famous markets;
Meet other folks from around the country working on a variety of public market projects.
The registration fee covers two days of tuition, including tours, in-depth presentations and discussions, on-site evaluation, case studies, and training support materials. Light lunch and refreshments will be provided on both Thursday and Friday. There is a reception Thursday evening (included) and an optional dinner Friday night (please note the dinner is a change from previous workshops and is not included in the fee.)
Sign up now and join a small, dynamic group of people which in past workshops has included mayors, planning officials, community development officials, neighborhood organizers and market sponsors.
About the instructors:
STEVE DAVIES, as vice president of PPS, has directed nearly 400 major projects in the U.S and abroad and is sought out as one of the major thought leaders in public markets. He oversees the activities of PPS's Public Market Collaborative where he currently works on a new local economic development initiative with the Ford Foundation.
A specialist in all phases of market development, DAVID O'NEIL has worked on over 100 market projects around the world and has directed three international public market conferences. He recently published "Reading Terminal Market: An Illustrated History," a beautifully illustrated narrative about one of the country's largest public markets located in Philadelphia, PA.
For more information about the workshop, or to register online now, go to http://www.pps.org/info/ppsnews/markets_training_course
For additional inquiries, please contact Chris Heitmann at 212-620-5660 or at cheitmann@pps.org.
How did PopSci find its high-tech cities, and how does yours rate? by Rena Marie PacellaTo determine which U.S. cities can claim the designation "high-tech," we chose 36 technology indicators-our raw data-based on expert and staff opinion. Items such as "robotic surgery," "number of Wi-Fi hotspots" and "R&D budgets at local universities" all qualified. We grouped each indicator into one of six broad categories: Transportation, Connected Citizens, Medical, Jobs, Education and Energy. >Link
FYI, Fort Wayne isn't on the list.
By STEVE PAUL The Kansas City Star
From his desk at the high-style home furnishings store he owns, Rod Parks will have a front-row view of the new downtown.
The big corner windows of Retro Inferno, at Grand Boulevard and Truman Road, overlook the highway canyon of the South Loop and, beyond that, the excavation under way for a new entertainment district called Kansas City Live. Parks can also see the blocks where a huge new arena will rise.
As a merchant in the Crossroads Arts District, a downtown neighborhood that's been awakening for years, Parks wonders how all that activity will affect him.
"I bet I'm in the crosshairs of some people," Parks says.
And he's not alone.
Many of the artists, business owners and creative entrepreneurs who have brought the onetime industrial Crossroads district back to life in the last 15 years have been watching the downtown rebound with mixed feelings.
In some ways they sense a struggle going on for the soul of their neighborhood: Yes, the downtown rebirth is great, but can the Crossroads retain its creative edge in the face of a $2.5 billion redevelopment juggernaut just next door?
The answer may lie in a tangle of economics and urban design.
On the one hand, rising property values, and thus taxes, are forcing the issue. In reaction, some Crossroads leaders are working with city and business interests on a tax-abatement plan to help the art community deal with the pressure.
"Most other cities use artists to develop neighborhoods like this," says Suzie Aron, a real estate investor, broker and arts supporter who heads the Crossroads Community Association. "We are much further along - our neighborhood is already developed - so now we're trying to save it."
As for design, the vibes of encroaching mega-developments are pulsing through the district, raising questions about how size, scale and details contribute to the neighborhood's urban fabric and its self-image.
The Crossroads is an area of roughly 100 blocks bounded by Interstate 35 and Bruce R. Watkins Drive from Truman Road to the railroad tracks behind Union Station. Its mix of old brick facades and high-ceilinged, former warehouses has been a low-expense magnet for artists since the late 1980s. Along with the creative interests and the influx of residents, it retains a diverse range of businesses from automotive shops to high-end restaurants.
Bracketed by the high-rise stature of the Central Business District and Crown Center, the Crossroads in some ways has become the meat in the sandwich of a greater downtown. Its one-of-a-kind shops, galleries, design stores, loft buildings and creative businesses stamp it as a distinctive district. Its promoters point to recent mentions in national media as validation of their difference. The First Fridays gallery crawl attracts thousands of strollers, winning over many first-time visitors.
As the larger developments in the South Loop lean toward brand names and mass market appeal - names such as ESPN Zone and Hard Rock Cafe have been floated as typical attractions - Crossroads people see their district as a vital and complementary contrast.
Yet, neighborhood pioneers know that in city after city, successful artist-led urban transformations are usually followed by bigger crowds and mainstream developers. Then another transformation begins, which smoothens the chaotic edginess that defines frontier districts and forces the artists out.
Aron and a committee have been working on a tax-abatement plan for arts uses in the Crossroads and seeking feedback from city and business leaders. A draft proposal would establish a special district under the auspices of the Planned Industrial Expansion Authority and mitigate tax increases caused by rising property values. Aron hopes a program could be in place by spring.
Already some artists have moved out of the busy, central part of the district and are igniting interest in less-expensive blocks east of Oak Street. Another group of galleries, artists and businesses are in the midst of remaking a long-forgotten triangle of buildings west of Broadway.
But both of those moves also signal that the Crossroads is still growing as a creative district.
The idea of a baseball stadium in their midst has been a recent catalyst for debate. For one thing it raises the question of how a stadium would affect the Crossroads' small-scale entrepreneurship and pedestrian-oriented environment.
Nathan Graham begs to differ. He's a New Orleans transplant and proprietor of Tchoupitoulas, a coffee shop on Walnut Street that sits on one of several possible stadium sites around downtown.
"Even if it costs me a business," Graham says, "I think a stadium is a great opportunity for the city."
Still, some Crossroads leaders have been vocal about the consequences of a stadium.
"We're a community that's pulled itself up by the bootstraps when nothing was going on in the Loop to speak of," says Brad Nicholson, a developer who has been active in the Crossroads for years. "Everybody says what a great neighborhood it is. We just need to make sure we don't go start destroying large sections of it."
Many in the Crossroads have been content to see their neighborhood grow incrementally. They hope that slower growth will help fill in long vacant lots, or "gaps in the teeth," in ways that are compatible with the district and that also foster entrepreneurship.
"Look at this little building," Aron says.
She is standing on the sidewalk in the 1500 block of Main Street. Across the way is a three-story stone-fronted building, which houses the Lane Blueprint Co. It's the last late 19th century building remaining on its side of the street. Built in 1889, it also would give way to a stadium, under one potential location.
Yet, says Aron, those are the kinds of buildings where small businesses create jobs and ideas and lend a city its uniqueness.
"We need to find ways to help developers build a whole block of buildings like this," adds Kevin Klinkenberg, an architect who joined Aron on a recent walk in the district.
Some downtown interests say it's premature to worry about a baseball stadium and what effect it might have on the Crossroads. And they argue that no one is trying to drive out small operators. Just the opposite.
"Small entrepreneurial business is incredibly important to the sustainability and vitality of downtown," says Bill Dietrich, president and CEO of the Downtown Council, which has become a guiding force of downtown's makeover. "A lot of the projects we're working on are meant to bring more pedestrians downtown, more street retail, making it more lively for people - for our residents, our office workers and for the visitors."
Jay Tomlinson, a founding member of the Urban Society, is a principal in Helix Architecture and Design, whose office on Walnut Street faces a possible Crossroads stadium site. Yet he has taken a more optimistic view of the situation.
"I'm not going to fall into the NIMBY trap and be overly concerned about a ballpark," Tomlinson says, using the acronym for "not in my back yard." "The project will go where it should go. There's too much NIMBY going on that limits the greater good."
Tomlinson says he is genuinely excited about what's happening in and around the downtown loop.
"I think this is the brightest time the city has seen since I've been here working the last 25 years," he says. "So I think it's full of hope and excitement ... I'd rather focus on the good things that are going to happen.
"Yeah, we'll make some mistakes," Tomlinson says, "but that's how cities are made. You know, Paris didn't get made into the city it is today by doing it right the first time. An urban design process is a messy, long-lasting, happy-accident type of process."
To reach Steve Paul,
call (816) 234-4762 or send e-mail to paul@kcstar.com.
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The details
Smaller-scale design, the kind of planning and amenities that make the space between buildings comfortable and lively, is being addressed in the Crossroads and the Central Business District on several fronts:
· A new downtown planning study under way by Sasaki Associates is expected to look at how revitalized districts connect with one another and preserve a sense of neighborhood at street level. And the Chicago architectural firm of Skidmore Owings & Merrill has been hired to upgrade streetscape designs along 12th Street and elsewhere in the revitalized loop.
· A new organization called the Urban Society is studying the plausibility and impact of five possible downtown stadium sites, as well as other neighborhood-scale issues such as angle parking on some wider streets.
· A major city study of a new 22nd-23rd Street corridor addresses the need for pedestrian-scale design and streetscape improvements throughout the Crossroads. Expect more vest-pocket parks, for instance, and creative approaches to paving and signs.
by Dean Hybl - myregion.org
The recent opening of Paris Hilton's new nightclub in downtown Orlando created a brief media buzz, but another recent addition to downtown will likely have a much greater impact in the continued revitalization efforts of the area. UCF's Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA) has opened its first phase and soon will bring high-tech opportunities to downtown.
In April of 2004, the Florida Legislature provided $4.2M to UCF to create the FIEA. The City of Orlando and the Community Redevelopment Agency provided the downtown Expo Centre facility, as well as the funds to refurbish the building, to serve as the new home for the UCF School of Film and Digital Media (SFDM) and for FIEA.
The idea is to formulate a "creative village" in downtown Orlando - a community of small, medium and large media-related businesses, students, entrepreneurs, shops, restaurants, living spaces, learning places and entertainment venues. The vision is that the FIEA and the SFDM will serve as the catalysts for this growth.
As it turns out, the timing to start the FIEA couldn't be better. Recent expansion by Entertainment Arts in Orlando has created a natural partner for this innovative program.
FIEA is a 16-month post-graduate certificate program designed to turn recent college graduates into sought after software creators and designers. The idea of the program is to create an actual working environment complete with desks, computers, work teams and tasks.
The first class for FIEA will start training in September 2005 with the target number of students in the first class to be 50. The plan is to bring in a new class each September, January and May with as many as 200 students involved in the program at one time. Students will have the opportunity to specialize in one of five different areas: 3-D modeling, animation, tech artistry, software design and project management.
Recruitment of the first class is starting in February with the hope that this innovative program will attract the best and the brightest among recent college graduates looking to prepare themselves for the computer game industry. Having one of the giants in the field, Entertainment Arts, located in the community also has the potential to be a major asset for this ambitious project and they have already signed on to be a major contributor to the program. UCF now joins Carnegie Mellon and the University of Southern California as schools partnering with Entertainment Arts.
Also to be housed in the Expo Centre are the Center for Research and Education in the Arts, Technology and Entertainment (CREATE) and the Visual Language concentration, which is an undergraduate concentration through UCF. Students in the Visual Language concentration will specialize in digital media and will have two years of classes at the Expo Centre after spending their first two years at the main UCF campus fulfilling their core class requirements. The first class includes 19 students, who are currently at the Expo Centre. The expectation is to have 30 students in that concentration from each graduating class.
by James Schroder: Over the past several years...Cincinnati has shed its close-minded image and begun to revitalize its center city — focusing on strategies of broad appeal to make those who already live in its metropolitan orb think about moving back to the city.Cincinnati? Cosmopolitan? You better believe it. >Link
Tue Sep 21, 3:41 AM ET Yahoo News
PARIS (AFP) - One of the biggest motor shows in the world is set to take place in Paris this week -- but not before the city makes another display of its crusade against the car that it hopes will transform the capital into a haven for pedestrians and cyclists.
The French capital is on Wednesday to host the annual car-free day it launched six years ago and which is now copied by 1,100 other cities, most of them in Europe.
But then, just three days later, starting Saturday, the Paris International Motor Show is to open its doors, attracting one and a half million visitors over the following two weeks.
The juxtaposition of events highlights the love-hate relationship with cars that has taken hold of the French capital.
The left-wing municipal council has all but declared war on private four-wheeled transport by laying down road-hogging bus lanes and cycle paths, expanding plans for a tramway and paving over thousands of parking spaces.
It has also expressed a wish to see bulky four-wheel drive vehicles favoured by wealthier residents banned entirely from city streets.
But the conservative national government under President Jacques Chirac has provided little support.
As a result, the car-free day introduced in 1998 by the then-Socialist government is in decline. In 2002, 98 French cities and towns participated. Last year, it was 72. This year, there will only be 50.
The organisers say that is because September 22 falls in the middle of the week, posing a problem for authorities trying to balance economic and transport necessities and raising the possibility that the day might be moved to a Sunday from next year.
Some of those that are taking part this year are offering free public transport on the day.
Many other European cities, including London, Madrid and Stockholm will be following suit in banning cars from streets, but Rome and Berlin will not.
Farther afield the initiative has proved a bust. Only Montreal in Canada, 17 Brazilian towns and cities, a handful of Japanese cities and Taipei have joined what was once hoped would become a worldwide experiment in urban living without the omnipresent car.
"The initiative is seeing a certain ebb," French Environment Minister Serge Lepeltier told journalists last week.
That prompted the Paris municipal official in charge of city transport, Denis Baupin, to decry a "disengagement by the state" that he said could put an end to the annual event altogether.
Come the weekend, the whole debate is likely to be largely forgotten though, when the Paris Motor Show grabs headlines with its flashy series of concept cars and innovative grandstanding.
More than 60 new models are to be unveiled during the two-week exhibition, during which 480 manufacturers from 26 countries show off their latest goods.
This year, though, the emphasis is likely to be less on the extravagantly powerful and luxurious vehicles -- although they will still provide the glamour quotient -- than on the generally depressed state of car sales almost everywhere and the effect the sky-high price of oil is having on the industry.
Chirac, who is to officially open the show, is said to be ready to highlight "clean" cars, such as a model Citroen is bringing out and hybrid vehicles from Toyota as his contribution to acknowledging the pollution problem caused by current private transport. >Link
A mini-power station on the roof of many UK homes will soon be possible and affordable, a British think-tank says.The Green Alliance, an independent body which advises policy-makers, says that micropower schemes have come of age.
In a report which will be published on 15 September, it says the Sun, the wind and even the heat in the soil can all provide clean energy for a household.
The report says micropower can help the UK to keep its promises on tackling climate change, and also to save money. >Link
PHILADELPHIA - For about $10 million, city officials believe they can turn all 135 square miles of Philadelphia into the world's largest wireless Internet hot spot.Whither, Wi-Fi F.W.?The ambitious plan, now in the works, would involve placing hundreds, or maybe thousands of small transmitters around the city — probably atop lampposts. Each would be capable of communicating with the wireless networking cards that now come standard with many computers.
Once complete, the network would deliver broadband Internet almost anywhere radio waves can travel — including poor neighborhoods where high-speed Internet access is now rare. >Link
This special report was adapted from Life 2.0: How People Across America Are Transforming Their Lives by Finding the Where of Their Happiness (Crown Business, $24.95), a new book by Rich Karlgaard, the Forbes publisher and Digital Rules columnist.In these 60 small towns, medium-sized cities and larger metro regions, you can live well and your dollar will go far. Of course, the "live well" half our claim is shot through with subjectivity. It will be highly dependent on who you are, and what you want out of life. There are plenty of folks who will steadfastly refuse to suffer even one more day of subfreezing temperatures--period, end of story. Others may be bored to the point of madness by living in a small town. They crave big-city stimulation. Their hope is to find such a lifestyle devoid of Manhattan-like expenses and pressures. Our hope is that this special report will help you find the where of your happiness. Click on a type of community--Porch-Swing, Happy Hootervilles, IQ Campuses, Steroid Cities, Bohemian Bargains, or Telecommuting Heavens--for a short description and our ten picks in that category. >Link
Submitted by: Alan Billings
Edy's want to buy the old railway bed. I think that it would be better served making into a walking and biking trail such as the trails in Indianpolis. It could connect downtown with Glenbrook and other attractions. Families with children could use it along with commuters. It would increase ther property values of that lane near it. Plus give incentive to develop much of the vacant property near it. If you have been to Indianapolis you can see how areas that once were ran down are now areas the city is proud of and they advertise. The following is from The Indianapolis Star:
The Monon Trail is attracting more than nature-lovers, joggers and bikers these days: Developers also are trying to lay their hands on adjacent lots to build as many homes and condominiums as possible.Upscale condos in Broad Ripple and single-family homes in Carmel are sprouting along the Monon, thanks to an increase in property values brought on by the trail. >Link
"Since Indianapolis does not have any mountains or oceans, the Monon has become an important natural feature," said Steve Pittman, who's developing 148 condos in Broad Ripple adjacent to the trail. "If developers find any property along the trail, they'll purchase and develop it."
Pittman said he paid 50 percent more for the 12-acre site than he'd have if the property had not been on the trail. Likewise, condos close to the trail would be priced 10 percent to 15 percent more than similar homes farther away.
"It's hard to quantify demand for the trail," he said, "but we know it's very high."
A joint study by the city and Indiana University estimates that property values along the trail will jump 5 percent once it's completed, said Ray Irvin, administrator of Indy Greenways.
"There's huge interest among developers for property along the trail," he said. "We recently announced grants to develop the South Monon; I've had real estate people wanting to know how soon they can do it.
"People see proximity to the trail as a real value to their property."
To attract more people to its Far Southside housing communities, developer CP Morgan paved nearly two miles of trail -- north of Southport Road near Banta Road -- and donated it to the city.
"We find prospective buyers are interested in amenities such as bike routes and trails," said Scott Bowers of CP Morgan, which is developing communities in Perry, Decatur and Franklin townships along another trail being developed to connect to the Monon.
"The city identified a need for a trail in the Southside. So we worked in conjunction with the city to build the trail, and at the same time made our communities more attractive."
Matt McLaughlin, a real estate agent with F.C. Tucker who sells homes in Carmel and Fishers, concedes proximity to the trail makes it easier to sell homes.
"I can't give you an exact dollar value," he said, "but it's easier to sell homes on the Monon."
Some observers, however, are worried at the mushrooming growth along the Monon.
"The trail is planned to be a recreational facility with the intent of providing passive relaxation," said community activist Clarke Kahlo. "If the trail becomes crowded with over-intense commercial and residential uses, it loses its recreational value."
Kahlo said plots along the trail were being converted into housing developments -- a trend that could endanger the environment and quality of air.
For instance, he said, the land in Broad Ripple where Pittman is developing the condos was supposed to be a park, according to the city's master plan. But the land was rezoned to develop the condos instead.
"We've got a comprehensive land-use plan," Kahlo said, "but these plans are not effective."
Pittman counters that the Broad Ripple land was originally a dump site.
"We cleaned out the property," he said. "What we are doing is promoting economic development, creating a stronger tax base and bringing more business to the merchants."
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them, Mark Twain has been credited with saying.A new study takes that principle a step further, ranking the USA's "most literate" cities not by how many residents can read, but by various measures of how many do. And by those measures, Minneapolis is the most literate, El Paso, the least. >Link
The oft-forgotten story of how a hip town came to be that way.Though the developers are in the spotlight these days, cute and trendy Saratoga Springs, NY, was brought back from the brink by citizen activists--and important history for those addressing the new challenges of growth.
In 1973, Saratoga Springs was more than a little worse for wear: Sidewalks were crumbling, the few remaining elm trees on Broadway were dying, flophouses and shuttered buildings were not uncommon. Strip malls sprouted up in spots where glorious buildings from the city's golden age had been razed. Visitors — what few there were — would have been hard-pressed to detect any promise of the distinctive landscaping, cleanliness and well-kept buildings that Saratoga boasts today. >Link
Providence Journal - July 2, 2004 A half-century ago, many urbanists, including the late Lewis Mumford, believed that the inexorable shift to the suburbs was transforming cities into discarded parcels of "a disordered and disintegrating urban mass." Yet today, cities seem in many ways not to be disintegrating; rather, they are widely believed to be enjoying a revival of considerable proportions.>Link
Such an assessment may be replacing the excessive pessimism of the 1960s with an overblown optimism. In reality, thoughout the last 40 years the suburbs have gained ground on the urban centers on almost every significant measure, from corporate headquarters to jobs in manufacturing, high technology, and business services.
So what about the ballyhooed urban revival?
What we are seeing is more like a subtle shift in the role of cities: from the commanding centers of global civilization to (at least in the advanced countries) a more peripheral function.
In many ways, this follows the prediction made a century ago by H.G. Wells, who said that cities would evolve from the unquestioned center of economic life into a "bazaar, a great gallery of shops and places of concourse and rendezvous."
Today, such cultural industries are becoming the focus of many urban political and business leaders. Instead of working to retain middle-class families, factory jobs, and economic superiority to the periphery, many cities now stress such ephemeral concepts as fashionability and "hipness" -- trend and style -- as the keys to their survival.
Montréal, for example, once a financial- and business-services center, seems intent on wiping out much of its remaining industrial base -- even its vibrant garment sector -- in favor of marketing the city as "hip and happening."
In many other cities -- including San Francisco, Miami, Boston, and New York -- culture-based tourism has emerged among the largest and most promising industries. And such fast-growing urban areas as Las Vegas and Orlando depend on providing "experiences," complete with eye-catching architecture and round-the-clock entertainment, as their base economy.
It is conceivable that New York, Boston or Chicago could poke along the 21st Century on the strength of their cultural attributes. They will probably never recover their former importance, but the yuppies, the aging affluent, and the temporary 20-somethings may have a good enough time not to notice.
The trend gets absurd, however, when it comes to smaller, less culturally endowed places. Take Detroit, the now desolate auto capital, whose political and business leaders hoped that by making it a "cool city" -- attracting gays, Bohemians, and young "creatives" -- they could find the answer to their profound economic and social problems. Unfortunately, though, many of those most attracted to culture, restaurants, and nose-ring parlors are not going to choose the Motor City over, well, about 50 alternatives.
This applies even to better-off smaller cities, such as Providence. Athough they have nicely restored central districts, attractive to professionals and college students, so do 100 or so other places. Some people might stay a year or two, maybe even a decade, but it's unlikely that culture will keep them after they've spent a weekend in Boston, not to mention New York.
A stratagem based on purported or real cultural attractions also fails to address some disturbing realities. Brookings Institution demographer Bill Frey says that many of the young people who are lured to "cool" urban places leave when they start businesses and families. He adds, "There are simply not enough yuppies to go around" for such cities.
If people stay in Providence, particularly people in their 30s, it is probably not for the art museums and cafés, but, rather, for more such mundane reasons as a low crime rate, affordable housing, family-friendly environments, and, more than anything else, jobs that pay decently.
This is where Providence and its environs can and often do outperform a New York or a Boston. Such advantages to being smaller, particularly when a city is well run, can spark a regional revival. A smaller community can often hone its development efforts, engage its citizens, and solve fundamental problems more easily than a big metropolis.
Yet city officials, planners, arts foundations and developers often don't adopt such an approach, because it can be difficult and expensive. It is much easier and more media-friendly (not to mention immediately profitable for developers and their political patrons) to plan some lovely or kicky project or endow a museum or sports facility with taxpayers' money than it is to nurture small businesses.
Meanwhile, it can be tough to persuade a factory not to move to Mexico or China; to rebuild failing schools; and to improve mass transit. Yet these economic fundamentals should remain the focus of progressive city officials and business and civic leaders.
As long as the leaders indulge their fantasies about being "hip" and neglect a firmer foundation, their cities will become little more than theme parks for the affluent -- and symbols of lost opportunity for everyone else.
The longtime Chicago mayor has vowed to make his city the greenest in the nation.
Contributed by Julie TaraskaDaley has been working for years toward his oft-stated intention to make Chicago the greenest city in America, no small matter given its size and industrial past...The most remarkable aspect of Daley?s consciousness-raising green crusade is that, after stumbling into it, he has committed major resources to developing a holistic approach to greening the city. >Link
TAMPA - A report released Wednesday says that the Tampa Bay area lags behind other metropolitan areas in its ability to attract and retain 25- to 34-year-olds, a critical part of any region's work force and one that will play an increasingly important role as baby boomers retire. The survey, titled "The Young and the Restless," delivered both bad news and good: It says the Tampa Bay area might be at a disadvantage when it competes against areas such as Atlanta, Charlotte and Chicago for the best and brightest young workers. It also says that many of the elements this region needs to reach those workers, such as a vibrant downtown, are not out of reach. >Link 1, >Link 2
"I'm optimistic," said Larry Thompson, president of the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota after seeing the survey results Wednesday.
The school, which has about 1,000 students, sees about 90 percent of its graduates leave Florida in their search for jobs and more dynamic communities, he said.
"This region has the foresight to be part of this study, and that awareness is important," he said. "You have to acknowledge that there is an issue or problem before you can address the problem."
The study takes the top 50 metropolitan areas in the country, and ranks them by how many 25- to 34-year-olds live there compared to the total population.
The Austin-San Marcos metropolitan area in Texas sits at the top of the list, boasting the highest proportion of these young adults, 18.2 percent, and the Atlanta metropolitan area takes the No. 2 spot with 17.6 percent, according to "The Young and The Restless."
You'll find the metropolitan area encompassing Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater near the bottom of the list: at No. 47, with 25- to 34-year- olds making up just 12.7 percent of people living here, the report says. The only metro areas with lower rankings are Buffalo-Niagara Falls in New York; Pittsburgh; and West Palm Beach-Boca Raton.
Looking closer at the local metropolitan area, Hillsborough County has the highest proportion of young adults: 25- to 34-year-olds make up 15 percent of the total population. Across the bay in Pinellas, 11.6 percent of the population falls into the 25-to-34 range. In Pasco, young adults are 10.3 percent of the population; in Hernando, 8.4 percent.
Carol Coletta, one of the researchers involved in "The Young and the Restless" study, conducted six focus groups in the Tampa Bay area with 25- to 34-year-olds who had recently moved to the area. She said Wednesday that the people she interviewed complained that the Tampa Bay area didn't seem to welcome newcomers or their ideas, or encourage diversity. They also lamented the lack of a vibrant urban downtown area, she said.
One respondent said there's not much to do in downtown Tampa: "You can't live there; there are no restaurants, no train, no coffee shops. I can't live there," according to Coletta.
Coletta said she held focus groups in different cities across the country, and downtown ``was nowhere more of an issue than it was in Tampa Bay."
Revitalizing downtown Tampa will be an important part of making the entire Tampa Bay area more attractive to 25- to 34-year-olds, she said. "It's an opportunity waiting to happen."
Christine Burdick, president of the Tampa Downtown Partnership, said the new report validates her organization's call to re-energize downtown. The group is about one month away from selecting a consulting firm to produce a "strategic vision plan" for downtown, she said.
Deanne Roberts, former chairwoman of the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce and a founder of CreativeTampaBay, said the report should serve as a wake-up call for business, education, government and community leaders in the area.
"It is critical that this community reverse the brain drain," she said Wednesday morning when the study was released to the public.
She outlined a call to action that includes elements such as reviving downtown Tampa, a push to produce more four- year college graduates, and a regional instead of county-by- county approach to marketing and development.
Bill Habermeyer, vice chair of Enterprise Florida Inc., said that the Tampa Bay area is up to the task.
"My sense is that the solutions are at hand, but it's a matter now of execution," he said.
Reporter Dave Simanoff can be reached at (813) 259-7762.
Paducah, Kentucky
By Sherrie Voss Matthews
They never thought it would happen so quickly.
When Mark Barone and Thomas Barnett visited a nearby arts district to see if they could adapt the concept for the neglected Lower Town neighborhood in Paducah, Kentucky, they never dreamed that five years later they would run out of properties to sell in Lower Town, an area once so worn out that people considered it good only for rental income. >Link.
"Lower Town had a lot of things going for it. Nice housing stock. Close to downtown. It became a perfect place for our little planning project," says Barnett, planning director of Paducah, an Ohio River town of 26,300 people. "The last time it was in good shape was in World War II and the early '50s. There had been no new construction since then."
Lower Town now resounds with pounding hammers, the grinding of drills, the slap of paintbrushes. Artists from across the nation are rehabbing the houses into residential, work, and gallery spaces. "It's mind-blowing. In the height of recession, there's constant building," says Barone, a painter and printmaker.
The changes are a result of the City of Paducah Lower Town Neighborhood Plan and Artist Relocation Program, winner of the 2004 American Planning Association Outstanding Planning Award for a Special Community Initiative.
Neglect and potential
Barone and Barnett thought Lower Town had possibilities. It had good housing stock built in the Victorian, Italianate, Greek Revival, and Queen Anne styles. And although the 30-square-block area had been neglected for 50 years, it was booming with local history.
When Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant marched through Paducah during the Civil War, his troops leveled many of the 1850s houses. But Paducah's business barons later built mansions in this neighborhood adjacent to downtown. Lower Town was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
But for all its former glory, Lower Town was shabby. Many of the grand old houses had been divided into apartments; 70 percent were rental housing. The grandiose architecture didn't discourage drug dealing.
Mark Barone moved to Lower Town 15 years ago, bought a 3,000-square-foot Victorian, and began renovating. But when he saw drug sales in a house down the street, Barone says, he got angry. "When I got involved, the drugs had come in. Slumlords reigned down here," Barone says. "I was so sick of the junk."
Gayle Kaler, former president of the Lower Town Renaissance Association, watched the neighborhood's decline. She and her husband moved to Lower Town in the early 1990s. Two houses near the century-old Kaler house were centers of drug activity.
"I wouldn't say the neighborhood was unsafe," Kaler says. "I never felt that way. But there was a group of people that were just not desirable at all; they were keeping out people who would care. (Lower Town) was known as the place to buy investment property, not the place to buy a home."
What do we have?
In pursuit of viable neighborhoods, a goal set by the city commission, the planning department in 2001 set out to prepare a plan for Lower Town's rejuvenation. Planners began a detailed inventory of the neighborhood's structures and property. They looked at inspection records and plat books, and drove through the neighborhood, recording every bit of information — including land use, vacant or owner-occupied, architectural style, building age — for all 333 structures.
Then planners went door to door to invite residents to public meetings. They met in four brain-storming sessions with 75 to 150 residents each and members of the newly resurrected Lower Town Renaissance Association. "We felt that any plan that didn't involve the community at the outset wouldn't work," Barone says. "The community knew what it needed, they knew the weaknesses and the strengths." Residents ranked the positive and negative aspects of Lower Town and listed items that would make the neighborhood a better place.
The city also started strictly enforcing codes requiring property owners to maintain minimum standards, and imposing stiff fines on those who did not comply.
Synergy
But Barone felt that something more was needed or the slumlords and drug dealers would be back. He traveled to Rising Sun, Indiana (pop. 2,500), and found an idea he thought Paducah could replicate. Barone, Barnett, city manager Jim Zumwalt, and city commissioner Bud Smith took a field trip to Rising Sun to study its art district. Lower Town's mixed-use zoning and spacious old houses would be a perfect place for galleries and homes to co-exist.
"We had all the fixin's to do this, [Barone] came and told us about it, we went down to take a look," Barnett recalls. "We looked at it, realized we could steal that plan and make it work in Paducah — perhaps even better because we have more to work with."
Barone was asked if he would spearhead the program. But he was preparing for a show in Washington, D.C., and didn't feel he had the time. The artist relocation plan sat for nine months before Barnett went back to Barone and asked him to draw up a proposal.
Barone worked over a weekend to pull together a proposal for the city commission, which approved the idea. The commission gave Barone $40,000 for the program, including a part-time salary as coordinator and money for marketing.
Barone and Barnett looked for ways to attract artists. Paducah Bank offered 7.5 percent fixed long-term loans for up to 100 percent of a structure's value. The city then bought down a half-percentage point, reducing the cost for the buyer. An enterprise zone offered further financial incentives for artists. Frontier Communications, a local web design and communications firm, provided free websites.
Barone approached every art publication he could think of, pitching the story of a town that was offering real estate at rock-bottom prices, with loans artists could use to buy and create their own home, work, and gallery spaces.
Sweet success
The program has generated national interest. "We put funny ads in across the U.S. to get them thinking. They call us up — kinda laughing — and ask, 'What is this artists relocation program?'" Barnett says. Of the artists who visit Paducah, about 25 percent return and buy.
Bill Renzulli, the first to come, arrived in the fall of 2001. He and his wife bought a burned out two-and-a-half story Victorian mansion and hired local contractors to renovate it. Renzulli has opened his gallery, set up a studio, and made a home for the family and their nine whippets.
"We signed on, and within a year there were 20 artists. Now there are 36," says Renzulli, a retired physician from Maryland and president of the neighborhood association. By last December five artists had their studios up and running. Others were in temporary quarters until permanent spaces were ready.
Artists have moved from California, Delaware, Illinois, and other states, and brought nearly $6.5 million in private investment, Barone says. Most of the properties have been sold, and values are rising. Fifty artists visited Paducah last year; this year Barone expects 75 to 100. He's planning to begin marketing worldwide.
For more information: Thomas Barnett at tbarnett@ci.paducah.ky.us or 270-444-8690; www.lowertownarts.com; www.renzulli.com; www.parducaharts.com.
Sherrie Voss Matthews is a freelance writer and editor based in Springfield, Missouri.
GRAND RAPIDS -- Now that a high-tech life sciences corridor is booming on this city's east side, its leaders are turning their attention back to the arts, which are already transforming a once seedy thoroughfare on the city’s south side into the new Avenue of the Arts. >Link
From Business Week:
Hispanics are an immigrant group like no other. Their huge numbers are challenging old assumptions about assimilation. Is America ready?
Maria Velazquez was born in a dingy hospital on the U.S.-Mexican border and has been straddling the two nations ever since. The 36-year-old daughter of a bracero, a Mexican migrant who tended California strawberry and lettuce fields in the 1960s, she spent her first nine years like a nomad, crossing the border with her family each summer to follow her father to work. Then her parents and their six children settled down in a Chicago barrio, where Maria learned English in the local public school and met Carlos Velazquez, who had immigrated from Mexico as a teenager. The two married in 1984, when Maria was 17, and relocated to nearby Cicero, Ill. Her parents returned to their homeland the next year with five younger kids.
The Velazquezes speak fluent English and cherish their middle-class foothold in America. Maria and Carlos each earn about $20,000 a year as a school administrator and a graveyard foreman, respectively, and they own a simple three-bedroom home. But they remain wedded to their native language and culture. Spanish is the language at home, even for their five boys, ages 6 to 18. The kids speak to each other and their friends in English flecked with "dude" and "man," but in Cicero, where 77% of the 86,000 residents are Hispanic, Spanish dominates.
The older boys snack at local taquerías when they don't eat at home, where Maria's cooking runs to dishes like chicken mole and enchiladas. The family reads and watches TV in Spanish and English. The eldest, Jesse, is a freshman at nearby Morton College and dreams of becoming a state trooper; his girlfriend is also Mexican-American. "It's important that they know where they're from, that they're connected to their roots," says Maria, who bounced between Spanish and English while speaking to BusinessWeek. She tries to take the kids to visit her parents in the tiny Mexican town of Valle de Guadalupe at least once a year. "It gives them a good base to start from."
The Velazquezes, with their mixed cultural loyalties, are at the center of America's new demographic bulge. Baby boomers, move over -- the bebé boomers are coming. They are 39 million strong, including some 8 million illegal immigrants -- bilingual, bicultural, mostly younger Hispanics who will drive growth in the U.S. population and workforce as far out as statisticians can project (charts). Coming from across Latin America, but predominantly Mexico, and with high birth rates, these immigrants are creating what experts are calling a "tamale in the snake," a huge cohort of kindergarten to thirtysomething Hispanics created by the sheer velocity of their population growth -- 3% a year, vs. 0.8% for everyone else.
It's not just that Latinos, as many prefer to be called, officially passed African Americans last year to become the nation's largest minority. Their numbers are so great that, like the postwar baby boomers before them, the Latino Generation is becoming a driving force in the economy, politics, and culture.
Cultural Clout
It amounts to no less than a shift in the nation's center of gravity. Hispanics made up half of all new workers in the past decade, a trend that will lift them from roughly 12% of the workforce today to nearly 25% two generations from now. Despite low family incomes, which at $33,000 a year lag the national average of $42,000, Hispanics' soaring buying power increasingly influences the food Americans eat, the clothes they buy, and the cars they drive. Companies are scrambling to revamp products and marketing to reach the fastest-growing consumer group. Latino flavors are seeping into mainstream culture, too. With Hispanic youth a majority of the under-18 set, or close to it, in cities such as Los Angeles, Miami, and San Antonio, what's hip there is spreading into suburbia, much the way rap exploded out of black neighborhoods in the late 1980s.
Hispanic political clout is growing, too. In a Presidential race that's likely to be as tight as the last one, they could be a must-win swing bloc. Indeed, the increase in voting-age Hispanics since 2000 now outstrips the margin of victory in seven states for either President George W. Bush or former Vice-President Albert Gore, according to a new study by HispanTelligence, a Santa Barbara (Calif.) research group. Bush opened the election year with a guest-worker proposal for immigrants that pundits took as a play for the Latino vote. He will follow up by rekindling his relationship with Mexican President Vicente Fox, who's due to visit Bush at his Crawford, Texas, ranch on Mar. 5. Democrats, traditionally the dominant party among Hispanics, are stepping up their outreach, too. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a Mexican-American and potential Vice-Presidential candidate, delivered a first-ever Spanish-language version of the Democrat's rebuttal to the State of the Union address.
The U.S. has never faced demographic change quite like this before. Certainly, the Latino boom brings a welcome charge to the economy at a time when others' population growth has slowed to a crawl. Without a steady supply of new workers and consumers, a graying U.S. might see a long-term slowdown along the lines of aging Japan, says former Housing and Urban Development chief Henry Cisneros, who now builds homes in Hispanic-rich markets such as San Antonio. "Here we have this younger, hard-working Latino population whose best working years are still ahead," he says.
Already, Latinos are a key catalyst of economic growth. Their disposable income has jumped 29% since 2001, to $652 billion last year, double the pace of the rest of the population, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia. Similarly, the ranks of Latino entrepreneurs has jumped by 30% since 1998, calculates the Internal Revenue Service. "The impact of Hispanics is huge, especially since they're the fastest-growing demographic," says Merrill Lynch & Co. (MER ) Vice-President Carlos Vaquero, himself a Mexican immigrant based in Houston. Vaquero oversees part of the company's 350-person Hispanic unit, which is hiring 100 mostly bilingual financial advisers this year and which generated $1 billion worth of new business nationwide last year, double its goal.
Yet the rise of a minority group this distinct requires major adjustments, as well. Already, Hispanics are spurring U.S. institutions to accommodate a second linguistic group. The Labor Dept. and Social Security Administration are hiring more Spanish-language administrators to cope with the surge in Spanish speakers in the workforce. Politicians, too, increasingly reach out to Hispanics in their own language.
What's not yet clear is whether Hispanic social cohesion will be so strong as to actually challenge the idea of the American melting pot. At the extreme, ardent assimilationists worry that the spread of Spanish eventually could prompt Congress to recognize it as an official second language, much as French is in Canada today. Some even predict a Quebec-style Latino dominance in states such as Texas and California that will encourage separatism, a view expressed in a recent book called Mexifornia: A State of Becoming by Victor Davis Hanson, a history professor at California State University at Fresno. These views have recently been echoed by Harvard University political scientist Samuel P. Huntington in a forthcoming book, Who Are We.
These critics argue that legions of poorly educated non-English speakers undermine the U.S. economy. Although the steady influx of low-skilled workers helps keep America's gardens tended and floors cleaned, those workers also exert downward pressure on wages across the lower end of the pay structure. Already, this is causing friction with African Americans, who see their jobs and pay being hit. "How are we going to compete in a global market when 50% of our fastest-growing group doesn't graduate from high school?" demands former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm, who now co-directs a public policy center at the University of Denver.
Still, many experts think it's more likely that the U.S. will find a new model, more salad bowl than melting pot, that accommodates a Latino subgroup without major upheaval. "America has to learn to live with diversity -- the change in population, in [Spanish-language] media, in immigration," says Andrew Erlich, the founder of Erlich Transcultural Consultants Inc. in North Hollywood, Calif. Hispanics aren't so much assimilating as acculturating -- acquiring a new culture while retaining their original one -- says Felipe Korzenny, a professor of Hispanic marketing at Florida State University.
It boils down to this: How much will Hispanics change America, and how much will America change them? Throughout the country's history, successive waves of immigrants eventually surrendered their native languages and cultures and melted into the middle class. It didn't always happen right away. During the great European migrations of the 1800s, Germans settled in an area stretching from Pennsylvania to Minnesota. They had their own schools, newspapers, and businesses, and spoke German, says Demetrios G. Papademetriou, co-founder of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. But in a few generations, their kids spoke only English and embraced American aspirations and habits.
Hispanics may be different, and not just because many are nonwhites. True, Maria Velazquez worries that her boys may lose their Spanish and urges them to speak it more. Even so, Hispanics today may have more choice than other immigrant groups to remain within their culture. With national TV networks such as Univision Communications Inc. (UVN ) and hundreds of mostly Spanish-speaking enclaves like Cicero, Hispanics may find it practical to remain bilingual. Today, 78% of U.S. Latinos speak Spanish, even if they also know English, according to the Census Bureau.
Back and Forth
The 21 million Mexicans among them also have something else no other immigrant group has had: They're a car ride away from their home country. Many routinely journey back and forth, allowing them to maintain ties that Europeans never could. The dual identities are reinforced by the constant influx of new Latino immigrants -- roughly 400,000 a year, the highest flow in U.S. history. The steady stream of newcomers will likely keep the foreign-born, who typically speak mostly or only Spanish, at one-third of the U.S. Hispanic population for several decades. Their presence means that "Spanish is constantly refreshed, which is one of the key contrasts with what people think of as the melting pot," says Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, a Latino research group in Washington.
A slow pace of assimilation is likely to hurt Hispanics themselves the most, especially poor immigrants who show up with no English and few skills. Latinos have long lagged in U.S. schools, in part because many families remain cloistered in Spanish-speaking neighborhoods. Their strong work ethic can compound the problem by propelling many young Latinos into the workforce before they finish high school. So while the Hispanic high-school-graduation rate has climbed 12 percentage points since 1980, to 57%, that's still woefully short of the 88% for non-Hispanic whites and 80% for African Americans.
Meld into the Mainstream
The failure to develop skills leaves many Hispanics trapped in low-wage service jobs that offer few avenues for advancement. Incomes may not catch up anytime soon, either, certainly not for the millions of undocumented Hispanics. Most of these, from Mexican street-corner day laborers in Los Angeles to Guatemalan poultry-plant workers in North Carolina, toil in the underbelly of the U.S. economy. Many low-wage Hispanics would fare better economically if they moved out of the barrios and assimilated into U.S. society. Most probably face less racism than African Americans, since Latinos are a diverse ethnic and linguistic group comprising every nationality from Argentinians, who have a strong European heritage, to Dominicans, with their large black population. Even so, the pull of a common language may keep many in a country apart.
Certainly immigrants often head for a place where they can get support from fellow citizens, or even former neighbors. Some 90% of immigrants from Tonatico, a small town 100 miles south of Mexico City, head for Waukegan, Ill., joining 5,000 Tonaticans already there. In Miami, of course, Cubans dominate. "Miami has Hispanic banks, Hispanic law firms, Hispanic hospitals, so you can more or less conduct your entire life in Spanish here," says Leopoldo E. Guzman, 57. He came to the U.S. from Cuba at 15 and turned a Columbia University degree into a job at Lazard Frères & Co. before founding investment bank Guzman & Co.
Or take the Velazquezes' home of Cicero, a gritty factory town that once claimed fame as Al Capone's headquarters. Originally populated mostly by Czechs, Poles, and Slovaks, the Chicago suburb started decaying in the 1970s as factories closed and residents fled in search of jobs. Then a wave of young Mexican immigrants drove the population to its current Hispanic dominance, up from 1% in 1970. Today, the town president, equivalent to a mayor, is a Mexican immigrant, Ramiro Gonzalez, and Hispanics have replaced whites in the surviving factories and local schools. It's still possible that Cicero's Latino children will follow the path of so many other immigrants and move out into non-Hispanic neighborhoods. If they do, they, or at least their children, will likely all but abandon Spanish, gradually marry non-Hispanics, and meld into the mainstream.
But many researchers and academics say that's not likely for many Hispanics. In fact, a study of assimilation and other factors shows that while the number of Hispanics who prefer to speak mostly Spanish has dipped in recent years as the children of immigrants grow up with English, there has been no increase in those who prefer only English. Instead, the HispanTelligence study found that the group speaking both languages has climbed six percentage points since 1995, to 63%, and is likely to jump to 67% by 2010.
The trend to acculturate rather than assimilate is even more stark among Latino youth. Today, 97% of Mexican kids whose parents are immigrants and 76% of other Hispanic immigrant children know Spanish, even as nearly 90% also speak English very well, according to a decade-long study by University of California at Irvine sociologist Rubén G. Rumbaut. More striking, those Latino kids keep their native language at four times the rate of Filipino, Vietnamese, or Chinese children of immigrants. "Before, immigrants tried to become Americans as soon as possible," says Sergio Bendixen, founder of Bendixen & Associates, a polling firm in Coral Gables, Fla., that specializes in Hispanics. "Now, it's the opposite."
Selling in Spanish
In its eagerness to tap the exploding Hispanic market, Corporate America itself is helping to reinforce Hispanics' bicultural preferences. Last year, Procter & Gamble Co. (PG ) spent $90 million on advertising directed at Latinos for 12 products such as Crest and Tide -- 10% of its ad budget for those brands and a 28% hike in just a year. Sure, P&G has been marketing to Hispanics for decades, but spending took off after 2000, when the company set up a 65-person bilingual team to target Hispanics. Now, P&G tailors everything from detergent to toothpaste to Latino tastes. Last year, it added a third scent to Gain detergent called "white-water fresh" after finding that 57% of Hispanics like to smell their purchases. Now, Gain's sales growth is double-digit in the Hispanic market, outpacing general U.S. sales. "Hispanics are a cornerstone of our growth in North America," says Graciela Eleta, vice-president of P&G's multicultural team in Puerto Rico.
Other companies are making similar assumptions. In 2002, Cypress (Calif.)-based PacifiCare Health Systems Inc. (PHS ) hired Russell A. Bennett, a longtime Mexico City resident, to help target Hispanics. He soon found that they were already 20% of PacifiCare's 3 million policyholders. So Bennett's new unit, Latino Health Solutions, began marketing health insurance in Spanish, directing Hispanics to Spanish-speaking doctors, and translating documents into Spanish for Hispanic workers. "We knew we had to remake the entire company, linguistically and culturally, to deal with this market," says Bennett.
A few companies are even going all-Spanish. After local Hispanic merchants stole much of its business in a Houston neighborhood that became 85% Latino, Kroger Co. (KR ), the nation's No.1 grocery chain, spent $1.8 million last year to convert the 59,000-sq.-ft. store into an all-Hispanic supermercado. Now, Spanish-language signs welcome customers, and catfish and banana leaves line the aisles. Across the country, Kroger has expanded its private-label Buena Comida line from the standard rice and beans to 105 different items.
As the ranks of Spanish speakers swell, Spanish-language media are transforming from a niche market into a stand-alone industry. Ad revenues on Spanish-language TV should climb by 16% this year, more than other media segments, according to TNS Media Intelligence/CMR. The audience of Univision, the No.1 Spanish-language media conglomerate in the U.S., has soared by 44% since 2001, and by 146% in the 18- to 34-year-old group. Many viewers have come from English-language networks, whose audiences have declined in that period.
In fact, Univision tried to reach out to assimilated Hispanics a few years ago by putting English-language programs on its cable channel Galavision. They bombed, says Univision President Ray Rodriguez, so he switched back to Spanish-only in 2002 -- and 18- to 34-year-old viewership shot up by 95% that year. "We do what the networks don't, and that's devote a lot of our show to what interests the Latino community," says Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos.
The Hispanicizing of America raises a number of political flash points. Over the years, periodic backlashes have erupted in areas with fast-growing Latino populations, notably former California Governor Pete Wilson's 1994 effort, known as Proposition 187, to ban social services to undocumented immigrants. English-only laws, which limit or prohibit schools and government agencies from using Spanish, have passed in some 18 states. Most of these efforts have been ineffective, but they're likely to continue as the Latino presence increases.
For more than 200 years, the nation has succeeded in weaving the foreign-born into the fabric of U.S. society, incorporating strands of new cultures along the way. With their huge numbers, Hispanics are adding all kinds of new influences. Cinco de Mayo has joined St. Patrick's Day as a public celebration in some neighborhoods, and burritos are everyday fare. More and more, Americans hablan Español. Will Hispanics be absorbed just as other waves of immigrants were? It's possible, but more likely they will continue to straddle two worlds, figuring out ways to remain Hispanic even as they become Americans.
By Brian Grow, with Ronald Grover, Arlene Weintraub, and Christopher Palmeri in Los Angeles, Mara Der Hovanesian in New York, Michael Eidam in Atlanta, and bureau reports
From Wall Street Journal:
by David Wessel
Some cities have grown in the past several decades. Some have shrunk. The spread of air conditioning helped sunnier spots such as Las Vegas. Waves of immigrants kept the population rising in cities such as Miami.
But why is Boston doing so much better than Philadelphia? Minneapolis better than Milwaukee? Columbus, Ohio, better than Cleveland? In Scotland, why is Edinburgh doing better than Glasgow, which has lost nearly half its population since 1960?
Blending a rich sense of history with clever number-crunching, economist Edward Glaeser finds that what's often true for people is true for cities: If you aren't born lucky or popular, be smart.
American cities outside the Sunbelt that have particularly skilled and well-educated populations prosper. "High-skill areas have been getting more populous, better-paid and more expensive," as in higher housing prices, he finds. Mr. Glaeser, 36 years old, who grew up on Manhattan's Upper East Side, suggests these cities do better at adapting when the economic winds shift.
Boston, across the Charles River from Mr. Glaeser's Harvard University office, well illustrates his point. "Boston's history is not a story of steady success," Mr. Glaeser wrote in a recent academic paper, "but rather a series of crises and restructurings."
Initially the largest city in the American colonies and a hub for trans-Atlantic trade, Boston stagnated in the late 1700s as New York and Philadelphia, with better ports and locations closer to the South, rose. But Boston prospered, again, in the early 1800s because it had the people who crewed, captained and owned sailing ships important to that era's maritime economy. With the advent of the steamship, which required fewer skilled workers, Boston suffered.
The city was left with one byproduct of its sailing supremacy: Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine of 1845 to 1850. (A decade later, Mr. Glaeser says, and it would have been cheaper for the Irish to take steamships to New York.) The combination of Yankee money and ingenuity and cheap Irish labor turned Boston into a successful factory town.
Yet Boston peaked about 1920, and it began losing people around 1950. Boston was cold, and warmer cities thrived. Boston was a factory town, and all factory towns suffered. The age of the automobile arrived, and downtown Boston's narrow streets were bad for driving. Boston taxes were high and regulation heavy, and business looked elsewhere. By 1980, three-quarters of Boston's houses were valued at less than the cost of building them. "There was little reason ... to suspect that Boston would be any more successful than Rochester or Pittsburgh or St. Louis over the next few years," Mr. Glaeser has written.
But Boston boomed as a center of finance and technology. Its population has been rising since about 1980. Its skilled people, both home-grown and recruited, are key. "Boston has been specializing in skills for almost 400 years," Mr. Glaeser says. Among the 200 or so U.S. cities with more than 160,000 people, only four (Boulder, Colo.; Stamford, Conn.; Madison, Wis.; and San Jose, Calif.) have a higher fraction of residents over age 25 with college degrees.
Cities with bigger educated populations have more success than others at arresting urban decay, Mr. Glaeser's number-crunching finds. Skilled, educated workers may react more quickly when the economy changes, reinventing the cities in which they live, he speculates.
One lesson is that luring and keeping smart, educated people is crucial. Access to raw materials or major transportation arteries is no longer sufficient for urban success, and tax breaks to attract companies aren't always the right recipe.
"Boston's ability to regenerate itself hinged upon its ability to attract residents, not just firms," Mr. Glaeser says.
That means maintaining city services, amenities and public schools that appeal to educated workers without raising taxes so high that the mobile go elsewhere. Federal or state governments should shoulder the burden of aiding the urban poor. Mr. Glaeser, who studied at the University of Chicago, a bastion of free markets, advocates vouchers for private school, but he'd settle for any alternative "that makes people come to your city and not have to pay $22,000 private-school tuitions."
Another lesson is to avoid excessive planning. "Get the smart folks," he says, "and let them figure out what the industries of the future are. Don't micromanage."
When the Berlin Wall fell, and Germany cut subsidies that had kept the city's factories alive, urban planners hoped to lure big-company headquarters. They failed. But because Berlin became a cool place to live, it drew hip Web-site designers, software writers, fashion designers and musicians, and they are reinventing its economy.
The dot-com bust hurt, of course. But because Berlin is increasingly where the trendy people are, Viacom's MTV and Vivendi's Universal Music Group recently moved their German headquarters to Berlin, from Munich and Hamburg, respectively, and the city recently had its first Fashion Week.
From Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
By Whitney Gould
Traverse the neighborhood around the intersection of W. Fond du Lac and W. North avenues and one of the first things that strikes you in this landscape of time-worn houses, struggling businesses and beautiful old churches is the number of vacant lots. In block after block, they're like missing teeth.
What if, as part of the strategy for rejuvenating the area, some of these accidental open spaces were turned into mini-parks or community gardens?
In an area with more pressing social concerns, parkland might seem like a frill. But Henry Hamilton begs to differ. "For long-term economic development, you must have a beautiful neighborhood," says Hamilton, a community activist who co-chairs the NAACP's environmental justice committee. "Open space can enhance property values. And here, you wouldn't even have to tear down a house to get it."
The Urban Open Space Foundation agrees. The non-profit, which promotes the creation of vest-pocket parks, plazas, gardens and other forms of "green infrastructure," has joined with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in nudging the city to give a higher priority to open space in the comprehensive neighborhood plan under development for the Fondy/North corridor.
The partnership has numbers on its side: Statistics show that, not counting nearby Tiefenthaler and Carver parks, only 1.75% of this high-density neighborhood is in open space, compared with 10% of the land area countywide.
Mike Maierle, the city's long-range planner, notes that the neighborhood plan already includes extensive language calling for usable, accessible green space. "The last thing we want," he says, "is to be perceived as anti-open space."
But the NAACP and the foundation want more specifics spelled out in the plan, according to the foundation's executive director, Heather Mann. And Acting Mayor Marvin Pratt, who handily survived Tuesday's primary election, has supported the two citizen groups.
The cause got another boost recently when the foundation won a grant of $90,000 from the U.S. Forest Service to assist the city in open-space planning for the corridor. The group still has to raise an equal amount from other sources, and it faces an even bigger challenge in getting new green spaces funded, because the city is not in the park business and the county can barely maintain the parks it has. That's one reason that former Mayor John O. Norquist was generally cool to expanding open space.
But with creative partnerships, it can be done. Possible options include tax-incremental financing, in which the increased property value from redevelopment is used to underwrite public improvements (a tool used in adding parkland to the booming Beerline redevelopment area along Commerce St.); business improvement districts, in which commercial property owners tax themselves for such amenities; private donations; and grants from foundations and corporations and government sources.
There's also talk about starting an urban version of the state's Stewardship Program, which has tended to concentrate on acquiring natural areas in the countryside.
The Fondy/North neighborhood isn't the only place where green infrastructure is taking root. There's a push to beef up open space in redevelopment of the Park East corridor. The plan for renewing the Menomonee Valley envisions extensive open space, especially along the Menomonee River. And the Historic Third Ward Association, in revising its neighborhood plan, is looking at ways to green up the area, including land swaps with developers for creating plazas near the river.
It's no easy task. "Everyone insists, 'I shouldn't have to pay for it,' " says Einar Tangen, president of the Third Ward's business improvement district.
Still, there are good arguments for finding a way to make it happen. As Tangen notes, "It's claustrophobic to be in a city surrounded by skyscrapers. Any urban neighborhood that has maintained its value will have significant green space. To not do it is to create the conditions that drove people out of the cities in the first place."
Besides adding value to neighborhoods and making cities more competitive with suburbs, open space consumes less in public services than development does. It absorbs runoff that would otherwise pollute waterways. It reduces the "urban heat island" effect by which the collective warmth of paved surfaces boosts global temperatures.
Steve McCarthy, a landscape architect active with the Urban Open Space Foundation, thinks the emerging revival of places like the Menomonee Valley, Park East corridor and the Fondy/North area makes this the perfect moment for green infrastructure to take hold here.
If we do this right, he says, "we have the potential to change the national image of Milwaukee."
I agree. And the idea is hardly revolutionary. More than a century ago, the pioneering landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted imagined ribbons of green threading their way through cities like Milwaukee, providing respite to rich and poor alike. Olmsted's emerald vision deserves renewal.
According to the 2000 Census, there are more than 65,000 people between the ages of 20 and 34 living in the Tampa area, and a host of young professionals groups are cropping up to cater to them.Teresa Gelston wants to make something clear: Verve is not your parents' networking crowd.
Rather, it's a self-directed collective of dynamic 20- and 30-somethings committed to making the Tampa Bay area a better place to live, work and play. >Link
Studies done in the Cleveland area and Midwestern cities such as Indianapolis, Chicago and Pittsburgh show that the arts generate many millions of dollars. Arts and cultural organizations also employ significant numbers of skilled workers, including union members. They spend money on services and supplies and pull in audiences who also patronize nearby businesses. They help revive neighborhoods, attract tourists and new residents and give rise to other enterprises such as restaurants, hotels and retail shops. But here's a tougher question: Does spending tax dollars on the arts give the local economy any more of a boost? Link
From the American Podiatric Medical Association:
Having business in Boston? Weekending in New York? Heading out to San Francisco for a new job? Don't forget your walking shoes. Those are three of the top-rated cities for walking as determined by the American Podiatric Medical Association (APMA), the doctors who take care of feet.
The APMA surveyed the most populated cities and then examined them for walker friendly characteristics, such as how many people walk to work each day, safe air quality, number of parks, how many podiatrists are available to keep your feet healthy and happy and how many health clubs and sports stores there are to serve walkers. One interesting finding is that each of the cities on the top-ten list has at least one government-appointed walking coordinator to develop special walking programs and encourage more walking within the city.
"Walking is one of the best ways to stay fit. As physicians dedicated to maintaining and improving foot and ankle health care, the APMA is delighted to partner with Prevention to provide valuable foot health information and recognize some of the great walking cities in our country," said Glenn Gastwirth, DPM, Executive Director APMA.
TOP CITIES: The Big Apple
New York, NY
New York is the media, cultural and financial capital of the world, which 9/11 brought so devastatingly into focus. Home to the United Nations, Carnegie Hall, the Guggenheim Museum, Broadway, Madison Avenue. You could spend years exploring afoot. Surprisingly, the Big Apple has become one of the safest big cities for pedestrians, boasts 1700 parks and relatively few bad-air days, (12 a year.)
TOP CITIES
San Francisco, CA
San Francisco, CA
Known as one of the world's most visually stunning cities, Frisco also has the steepest urban hills anywhere. But hey, they're worth it! Great parks, wide beaches, picturesque neighborhoods all invite walking. And don't forget to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge!
TOP CITIES
Boston, MA
Boston is so saturated with history, culture and intellectual heft it's often been called the American Athens. Even though the city has a reputation for predatory drivers, it has the highest percentage of people who walk to work, and the least number of pedestrian deaths (as related to the number of commuters). Its charming historic neighborhoods, beautiful parks and river trails make it a great walking city.
TOP CITIES: City of Brotherly Love
Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia, PA once known as this "greene countrie towne," as William Penn called it in 1682, is a charming combination of cobbled streets and sleek skyscrapers. Fairmount Park, the world's largest landscaped park at 8,900 acres, boasts great walking paths and a fabulous Japanese house and gardens. Walk!Philadelphia (215-848-9141) offers guided walking tours downtown.
TOP CITIES:
Seattle,WA
From any downtown vista point you see Puget Sound, a sprinkling of small islands and the long, blue, snow-tipped spine of the Olympic Mountains. Turn east and see the jagged peaks of the Cascades, to the southeast, Mount Rainier. Need we say more?
TOP CITIES: Mile High City
Denver, CO
Denver has those nearly perpetual sunny skies and mild temperatures that lift a walker's spirits. While views of the Rockies are spectacular, the walking in town is flat! And there are 205 city parks to saunter through.
TOP CITIES: THE CAPITAL CITY
Washington, DC
You may never get out of the museums or off the monument trail, but if you do, Georgetown is the oldest part of the city, a square mile of cobbled streets, shaded walks, boutiques and restaurants to rest your weary feet and replenish yourself with fine food. In spring, the cherry blossoms throughout the city are awesome.
TOP CITIES: THE WINDY CITY
Chicago, IL
Over 500 parks and a surprisingly low crime rate are some of the Windy City's strengths. It also boasts some of the world's best restaurants and museums along Magnificent Mile that stretches along North Michigan Avenue. And for a simple walking route, the 18-mile Lakefront Running Path offers great views of the city and Lake Michigan.
TOP CITIES:
Portland, OR
Home of the Portland to Coast Walk(where 50 teams of 10-12 walkers compete annually in a 126-mile walk to the coast over two days), Portland is lush and green, thanks to plenty of rain between October and May. Abundant trails are available within 5 minutes of downtown, or walk along the Waterfront Park bike path.
TOP CITIES: The Emerald Necklace
Cleveland, OH
Once known as "the Mistake on the Lake," Cleveland, bordering Lake Erie, is now America's number one turnaround story. Walkers will appreciate the 60-mile string of parks and greenbelts known as "the Emerald Necklace." And if you walk to the rock 'n' roll beat, you'll love the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.
Sperling continues to rank cities for various factors, this time on their stress levels. For the complete list, go to http://www.bestplaces.net/stress/stress_study3.asp
Sperling's BestPlaces ranks 331 Metro Areas with a New Stress Index
Portland, Oregon - Between international terrorism and a struggling economy, today's Americans are faced with more stress than ever. In this new study, America's favorite research gurus at Sperling's BestPlaces have identified the most and least stressful U.S. cities.
Which U.S. cities provide an environment that can help make our life more relaxed and enjoyable? Are there certain U.S. cities where residents regularly face particularly stressful conditions?
Our "Sperling Stress Index" is comprised of nine different factors which are associated with stress: unemployment rate, divorce rate, commute time, violent and property crime rates, suicide rate, alcohol consumption, self-reported "poor mental health", and number of cloudy days.
Study Highlights
Tacoma, Washington ranks as the most stressful city of the 100 largest metro areas. Galveston, Texas earns the dubious honor in the mid-size category, and Yuba City, California is the most stressful among the smallest metro areas.
On the brighter side, Albany, New York is the least stressful large metro area, while Provo, Utah anchors the top spot among the mid-size cities. Among the smallest metro areas, Bismarck, North Dakota in number one in a low-stress environment.
"Most of the top-ten stress cities are grappling with high unemployment," said Bert Sperling, president of Sperling's BestPlaces. "It affects the entire community, whether you presonally have a job or not. Rising unemployment has been tied to increased crime, and declining tax revenues force reductions in social services that affect young and old alike."
Las Vegas has a robust economy, but had the highest percentage of divorced residents and the highest rate of suicides. And despite Miami's #2 stress ranking, they maintained a positive mental attitude, with one of the lowest rates in residents reporting poor mental health.
Among the low-stress cities, there appears a common theme of state capitals and institutions of higher learning. "Government and universities provide a solid economic base to smaller cities, lessening the stress caused by economic cycles," reported Sperling.
There appears to be something special about Honolulu. In our studies, it seems that they have a unique attitude that allows them to be less affected by the stresses of today's busy lifestyle. A recent Sperling's BestPlaces study on the Best Cities for Sleep found Honolulu residents reporting the highest scores for restful and relaxing sleep. In this study, Honolulu also reported the lowest number of days that they felt anxious, tense, stressed or depressed.
An interesting footnote to this study was the discovery of a strong correlation between the rates of suicide and divorce. In the great majority of the cities we investigated, those areas with a high percentage of divorced residents was matched with a high suicide rate. And the opposite was true as well... places with few divorces also had few suicides.
This study will be updated regularly, and we have identified new categories for consideration in the next study. Your comments and suggestions are always welcome.
Here is some analysis for the most and least stressful of the 100 largest metro areas:
Top Five Most Stressful Cities
Tacoma, WA
Tacoma residents contend with one of the highest divorce rates in the country as well as one of the highest unemployment rates. It's cloudy in Tacoma much of the time, and the suicide and property crime rates are high. On a brighter note, Tacomans can feel safe from bodily harm thanks to the low violent crime rate.
Miami, FL
Miami has the highest violent crime rate in our study as well as one of the highest property crime rates. Making Miami even more stressful is the long commute time, a high unemployment rate, and a high rate of divorce. Despite these factors, Miami residents manage to maintain a positive mental attitude.
New Orleans
Maybe New Orleans should be nicknamed The Big Un -Easy, due to a high violent crime rate and a high unemployment rate. There's also a significant number of suicides and divorces.
Las Vegas, NV
The turbulent lifestyle of Las Vegas produces some extremely stressful conditions-- the highest suicide and divorce rates in our study, as well as a great deal of alcohol use. Unfortunately, the greatest number of sunny days per year doesn't seem to translate to overall happiness-- residents of Las Vegas have a great number of days experiencing poor mental health.
New York, NY
Beginning and ending their days with the longest commute in the country, the hustle and bustle of the Big Apple can really stress people out. Unemployment is high and so is violent crime, which may explain why New Yorkers spend many of their days experiencing stress, depression, a