The Digital Frontier of Planning

In Kohn's piece on the private nature of cyberspace, she raises several important questions regarding the role of the internet as a public forum.  Local governments are increasingly turning to internet technologies as tools for engaging the public in the planning process.  Kohn's writing predates the recent social media phenomenon, but it presents the caveats that should be considered before allowing public processes and events to be relocated from public spaces to e-spaces.

Digital technology has recently captivated the mind of both politicians and planners.  Local governments have rolled out internet-based applications such as one that allows to citizens to easily record and submit the location of potholes.  Considering that internet access is uneven across different socio-economic populations, these technologies have the potential to direct resources toward places of higher income.  

One can easily imagine further applications that would move important public functions into the virtual sphere.  As planners, we must investigate the equity implications of this transition to a internet-based medium of governance.  Kohn argues that the private nature of the internet bolsters the argument for preserving public space, but it also raises questions about the use of new planning techniques that have developed out of the social media craze.

From Sustainability to Resiliency: Finding the Middle Ground

In the past decade, sustainability emerged as one of the leading issues in the planning field.  Since the events of Hurricane Sandy last October, resiliency has stolen the spotlight as communities, cities, and regions have discussed ways to cope with future disasters.  The issues of sustainability and resiliency are strongly interconnected, but are still treated as mostly separate areas of planning and policy.  In "Climate Change and Planning," Kieran Donaghy emphasizes the need to incorporate mitigtion and adaption efforts into a comprehensive framework that is inclusive and flexible.

Perhaps the greatest opportunity for transitioning to a sustainable and resilient future is through imminent long-term investments in infrastructure.  For example, the electricity system is aging and will require substantial reinvestment in the coming years.  This investment could be used to rebuild the same inefficient and environmentally harmful system or it could be used to invest in a new system architecture that would advance the goals of sustainability and resiliency.

In New York City, following Hurricane Sandy, there has been much talk about changing zoning codes so that buildings can move generators from the basement to the roof and government officials have voiced support for distributed energy technologies that would allow energy customers to maintain power during disturbances to the grid.  Before Sandy, much of the talk was about energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but now the discussion has transitioned from focusing on sustainability to now preaching resiliency.  We as planners should establish a framework that ensures we will focus on mitigation and adaption by leveraging limited resources to advance both interests.

The Rise of the Celebrity Planner

The argument in Richard Florida's famous book, The Rise of the Creative Class, can be traced back to his 2001 Brookings Policy Report, "Technology and Tolerance."  In this report, Florida calls attention to an interesting trend--the cities with the most tech firms tend to be the cities with the most diversity.  The implication is that economic development is linked to a city's level of tolerance for "diverse" population groups.

This argument makes sense in a place like Austin where a thriving music scene and the slogan "Keep Austin Weird," probably plays a role in attracting techies from other tech poles.  But is this model replicable everywhere?  How about most places?  Or perhaps just in a few places?  I think that the top tech cities with the most diversity-friendly cultures might hold an advantage over other tech cities that are lacking, but I doubt this theory holds for those cities in the bottom half of the Milken Institute Tech Pole (e.g. Buffalo, Richmond, Louisville).

Ironically, Florida who toured the country advocating diversity and tolerance to places big and small, vibrant and declining, has since adopted the position that some cities stand no chance to return to prosperity.  He now argues that we should be giving aid to mobilize people in declining cities toward those cities that were at the top of the list for tech firms and diversity.  Florida comes off as a populist and his intentions seem dubious, but does his argument actually hold any value for policy makers and planners?

The Right to the City as a Vehicle for Social Change

Over the past few centuries, urbanization has followed a cyclical trajectory of centralized neoliberal preeminence followed by periods of social and urban revolution.  Harvey relates this pattern to the capitalist pursuit of economic surplus and the social claim on maintaing a collective right to the city.

The latest struggle involves the growing economic inequality that has accompanied the age of globalization.  Neoliberal policies and the pursuit of economic surplus absorption have implications for the social makeup of our future cities.  The working class is being slowly pushed out of the center city.  This pattern of displacement threatens not only the look and feel of the city, but the ability of our society to achieve social reform.

Cities have long been places of collective action and social change.  Social movements often originate in urban spaces and cities become a vehicle for social change.  The Occupy Movement suggests that the relationship between cities and social movements is starting to change.  As urban landscapes become privatized and the poor are displaced to the urban periphery, the city is losing its function as a place of protest and reform.  This phenomenon provides insight on the evolution of cities, but it is also, in and of itself, a cause for social action.

New Urbanism, Old Neighborhoods, Planning for All

Urban renewal projects are nothing new.  Neighborhood regeneration dates back to the 1960's and evokes thoughts of Robert Moses and public housing.  However, the urban renewal projects of today are cloaked as "urban renaissance" and are being pushed by global cities hoping to attract new investment and compete in the 21st Century global economy.

Neil Smith argues that reurbanization is a precursor for gentrification--the driving out of the working class from the urban center.  Urban regeneration is often carried out through publicly subsidized real estate projects that attract new settlers and vistors--typically those of greater means than existing residents.

While gentrification certainly has perverse effects, the return of the middle class to the urban center has many benefits.  The literature on sustainability suggests that we should welcome reurbanization with open arms.  It is not clear whether Smith believes these programs can produce successful outcomes and minimize the gentrification effect.  

The challenge is to accommodate a certain degree of neighborhood regeneration, while preserving affordability for the residents at risk of being displaced.  In the past, urban redevelopment has often had perverse results.  The challenge for today's planners is to guide today's "urban renaissance" without repeating the mistakes of the past.

Shrinking Cities: Process versus Outcome

Detroit—the mecca for shrinking city theorists—has produced some interesting ideas for how to revision cities in decline.  One popular idea involves the relocation of residents in mostly abandoned neighborhoods to neighborhoods of concentrated development.

The relocation concept jibes with smart growth theory and makes a lot of sense from a public finance theory, but whom does it benefit?  There is no obvious answer to this question because it would likely depend on how the perceived savings—reductions in the city budget from cutting off service to low-density neighborhoods—are spent.

Mallach (2011) raises concerns about the relocation idea and its implications for social justice.   From a planner’s perspective, it makes sense to assume that relocated residents would benefit from gaining access to broader opportunities that exist in pockets of concentrated population.  But Mallach contends that the process of relocation might result in unjust outcomes--thus he argues that planners should focus on producing equitable outcomes as opposed to equitable processes.  While inclusive processes do not guarantee equitable results, this should not diminish the importance of process as an indicator of progressive planning.

Shenzhen Speed Bumps

China's efforts to develop Shenzhen into a global city have been impressive if nothing else.  In merely a few decades, the formerly small manufacturing center has been transformed into a major city and the lynchpin of China's globalization strategy.

As a visitor in Shenzhen, the first impression might be of awe in witnessing how new the built environment seems and how much development is pushing outward along the city's edge.  Development has taken place at a furious pace--known as Shenzhen speed--as the State has implemented its meticulous plans for a global city.  These plans have taken an international approach, borrowing best practices in design and planning from around the world.

But the image of a perfectly planned global city starts to stray as one journeys out toward the city edge. The formal top-down development that has transformed the city center is meeting resistance as the informal built environment persists in areas where the State continues to push for redevelopment.

China's strategy assumes that the built environment is one of the most important factors in developing a legitimate global city.  Thus, they are adamant in squashing the resistance of informal development to protect the continuous form of the new city.  However, could it be that the persistence of the informal spaces signals their role as important assets in these communities?  Global cities are just as much about function and linkage as they are about form.

Global Cities Playing the Global Game: High-Skills to What End?

The dominant narrative on globalization emphasizes the importance of developing high-skill sectors with the greatest profit potential.  As developed countries have watched their middle class erode with the loss of manufacturing, economic development strategies have focused on expanding specialized service sectors—the sectors that manage the global economy.

Saskia Sassen argues that this approach ignores the array of jobs that accompany a high-skill, service economy.  The result can be growing economic inequality.  So what is the solution for rebuilding our middle class?

It seems that developing our innovation capacity—research and development—might be the way to go.  The Brookings Institute proposes significant investment in R&D for “advanced industries” such as advanced energy systems and photonics technology.  

Global cities aren’t waiting around for national governments to step up and promote these industries of the future.  New York City has recently invested in this idea.  Three new applied technology campuses have received funding and support from the city and will be opening soon.  These campuses will connect with cutting edge fields of the future.  However, Sassen would probably question the quality of job that might emerge from these sectors.  Will these schools focus on tech transfer to multinational corporations or will they focus on advanced manufacturing opportunities that will drive quality job growth?  It remains to be seen…

Holding on to Sticky Places in a Slippery Global Economy

Last week, I presented the concept of "sticky places" or places that are able to maintain their economic well-being throughout economic cycles.  However, there is debate about how much power local governments have over the ability to manage economic outcomes in an increasingly globalized economy.

Since the 1970's, globalization has mobilized capital and led to the decline of many industrial cities.  Some of these places have rebounded (e.g. Baltimore and Pittsburgh) as a result of strategic planning and economic restructuring.  So what is the playbook for government led urban regeneration?  Or in other words, where do you apply the 'sticky tape'?

Susan Fainstein explains how local governments vary greatly in their approaches to economic intervention.  While home rule allows U.S. cities a significant amount of autonomy, federal policies and the fragmented nature of federalism usually favor local policy that applies sticky tape to mobile corporations versus building sticky community-based assets.

This analogy is useful for evaluating the prevailing economic development model.  We have been applying sticky tape to something that is inherently slippery.  If we want a more impactful, sustaining, and widespread return on our public investements, we should devote our resources toward developing communities assets--human capital, social capital, etc--to which they are more likely to stick.

Sticky Places, Slippery Spaces

Why do cities prosper and why do cities fall?  This is undoubtedly a complicated question, but research into the spatial structure of cities provides us with a framework for investigation.

The theory of agglomeration tells us that firms colocate in urban areas to benefit from economies of scale and network effects.  This creates "sticky places" that easily attract and retain new firms.   

Economic geographer Ann Markusen describes four spatial structures of sticky places.  Two of those models --the 'Marshallian Industrial District' and the 'Hub and Spoke'--are well represented in the US.  Marshallian Industrial Districts (Silicon Valley) and Hub and Spokes (Seattle) differ greatly in their dependence on individual industries, with the latter being particularly dependent.

There are stories of success and failure for each model.  There is no ideal or utopian economic structure that guarantees the success of a city.  Instead, planners must be prepared when economic structures falter and lead the way in transitioning to a new structure that can connects assets with opportunities.  The key focus should be linkages: how do firms link to one another and where are the opportunities for development?

'Placemaking' in the Fourth Dimension

Whether you are a planner, an urbanophile, or just an active newspaper reader, you have probably come across the phrase “sense of place.”  To many, this concept might seem visceral—we travel through a neighborhood and grasp the strong character of its spatial environment.  In the era of placemaking, many planners are trying to establish or enhance the sense of place in communities.  For this purpose, we need a more measurable definition of place.

In “Politics and Space/Time,” geographer Doreen Massey rejects prior spatial theories and argues that space is very much a function of time.  Space is not an outcome, but a moment in time that is defined by historic and social relationships that describe the past and influence the future.

Today’s planners share both a placemaking agenda and new tools for understanding place.  However, our tools (census data, GIS, etc.) present a snapshot (2D or 3D) in time.  Without a more dynamic perspective of the forces that define space, how can we truly capture, understand, and improve our places?

An example of our technical limitations is a new search engine created by a University of Cincinnati professor.  This tool provides a heat map of similar places across the U.S. based on selectable environmental and socio-economic variables.  The ultimate goal is to "offer the user a total search for a sense of place."  This notion seems a bit naive in light of Massey's critique.  We must recognize that a static view of space or place is an incomplete view.  In the age of ‘big data’ how can we involve the 4^th dimension in our analysis of places and our attempts at placemaking?

Everything’s Bigger in (Houston) Texas, but is it Better?: Questioning an Overly Simplistic View of Land Use Controls and Their Effect on Rent

In the 21^st century, two of the leading causes in the field of urban planning are affordable housing and sustainability.  These two objectives are closely linked in that cities typically have a lower environmental impact per capita, but cannot attract more people to these “green” environments if they are unaffordable.  Could it be that planners and their zoning policies are actually a hindrance to the affordable housing and sustainability movements?  According to a few Harvard planners, our cities would be better off if they were less like New York City and more like Houston.

A 2009 policy brief by two Harvard planning professors, argues that excessive land use policy can block development and drive up rents (economics 101).  The policy brief implies that high-rent cities are poorly managed and will not allow for growth unless land use controls are reduced.

Harvard economist and urban theorist Edward Glaeser, in his recent planning best seller, The Triumph of the City, presented the same argument.  Glaeser points to the lack of zoning as the reason that rents are comparatively low in Houston.  But is the solution to have less zoning and charge developers a one-time fee (as Glaeser suggests) to cover the negative externalities (congestion, reduced light, etc.) that would be imposed on neighbors.  I have my doubts.  What do you think?