The Great Migration From Terror

http://www.citylab.com/crime/2015/06/the-great-migration-was-about-racial-terror-not-jobs/396722

Panel I from The Great Migration SeriesJacob Lawrence 1940-41
The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.
phillipscollection.org

Hello Everyone:

We are going to slowly edge our way back over to what this blog is about: architecture, historic preservation, urban planning and design.  Today, we are going to return to the subject of The Great Migration.  Instead of looking at vivid images of that great American internal movement of people from the South to the North (see post on June 3, 2015), we are going to look at the reasons why African Americans headed to cities like New York and Chicago.  To guide us is Brentin Mock's article for CityLab titled "The 'Great Migration' Was About Racial Terror, Not Jobs."  This article offers a different perspective on one of the greatest movements of humanity in the United States.

The Great Migration Map 1916-1930
centerstage.org

The American history books tell us the story of the "Great Migration" of African Americans during the twentieth century was about seeking better opportunities.  However, Michael Goldfield's 1997 book The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics (http://www.amazon.com) suggests:

There is, to be sure, some dispute over the degree to which conditions in the South pushed African Americans away from the South-these conditions being the decline of the cotton economy, mechanization, boll weevils, the AAA policies of the 1930s, and the general suppression of African-American rights-and the degree to which it was mostly a product of the pull caused by the calculated potential gains from the higher-paying northern labor market.

Panel III from The Great Migration SeriesJacob Lawrence 1940-41
The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.
phillipscollection.org

Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Montgomery, Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative (http://www.eji.org) is more certain about the reason for the "Great Migration."  Mr. Stevenson recently told The Marshall Project that African-American migration was more precisely about racial terror.  He said:

There are very few people who have an awareness of how widespread this terrorism and violence was, and the way it now shapes the geography of the United States.  We've got majority black cities in Detroit, Chicago, large black populations in Oakland and Cleveland and Los Angeles and Boston, and other cities in the Northeast.  And the African Americans in these communities did not come as immigrants looking for economic opportunities, they came as refugees, exiles from lands in the South where they were being terrorized.  And those communities have particular needs  we've never addressed, we've never talked about.  We've got generational poverty in these cities and marginalization within black communities, an you cannot understand these present-day challenges without understanding the Great Migration, and the terror and violence that sent the African Americans to these cities where they've never really been afforded the care and assistance they needed to recover from the terror and trauma that were there.

The Great Migration: Chicago grocery store
fasttrackteaching.com

Brentin Mock states, "This framing can't be emphasized enough..."  The Equal Justice Initiative has been leading the effort to map the locations where nearly 4,000 lynchings took place in America between 1880 and 1940.

Racial disparities are still apparent in contemporary America and include housing segregation and the multitudes of ways we, as a society, fail African American youths can be looked at through the way cities received African Americans during the "Great Migration."  Mr. Stevenson links the "generational poverty" plaguing African Americans today to the lack of "care and assistance needed to recover" from the trauma of lynchings, burning of black churches and towns, rapes and other racially motivated atrocities.

German Ugandan cab driver in Berlin
dw.com

This situation is also playing out in Europe, where David Frum wrote in The Atlantic, African and Middle Eastern immigrants have been flocking to European cities at reportedly unfathomable rates.  The majority of these immigrants are fleeing war, genocide, and poverty in countries such as Syria and Somalia.  Some are, in fact, seeking better economic opportunities.  As Mr. Frum reports, "There's little difference, in the eyes of native European residents, 57 percent of whom...hold negative attitudes toward people emigrating from outside the European Union.

Some nations, such as Jordan and Turkey, have doing a better job of taking in refugees.  The Jordanian and Turkish refugee camps provide more humane conditions.  However as Mr. Frum reports:

Much harder is creating economic opportunity within these overnight cities, and preventing extremism from taking hold.  Harder still: prompt resolution of the wars that displace people in the first place.

African Americans during World War I
nypl.org

 Brentin Mock states the obvious, "There's obviously a difference between the king of migration seen across seas today and that of African Americans in the past century.  But an injustice is illuminated in the comparison: Unlike in the European Union, African Americans were refugees in their own country; white Americans in the North and the South chose to disown their own people."

The families that were left behind during this period could have been identified as internally displaced people.  The quick resolution of the Civil War that the Federal government officials wished would happened during Reconstruction fell apart through acts of racially motivated terror by white Southern police, civic officials, vigilantes and Ku Klux Klan, all too frequently one and the same.

Great Migration in Chicago family photograph
blogs.baruch.cuny.edu

Northern cities, portrayed as sanctuaries, were anything but safe havens because they perpetuated similar systems and attitudes that relegated African Americans to inferior status. A June 11, 2015 CityLab article examined the origins of the term "black-on-black crime" (http://www.citylab.com/crime/2015/06/the...of...black-on-black-crime/395507), found that Northern whites believed that they migrants were criminal by nature, reason enough why the cities refused to offer assistance.

Panel XI from The Great Migration SeriesJacob Lawrence 1940-41
The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.
nytimes.com

Bryan Stevenson told The Marshall Project:

We created a narrative of racial difference in this country to sustain slavery, and even people who didn't own slaves bought into that narrative, including people in the North.  It was New York's governor-in the 1860s-that was talking about the inferiority of the black person even as he was opposed to slavery.

Brentin Mock offers this conclusion, "You don't have to have owned a slave to be complicit in the institution of slavery to have benefitted and have cheaper food to buy, cheaper materials, cheaper services, because the providers of the foods and services were using free slave labor."  Dare blogger add that the providers of foods and services still continue to use free slave labor?  The point here is that we are all complicit in the institution of slavery, the era of racial terror and lynchings. In short, the North and Congress essentially threw their collective hands up on equality of African Americans, setting us on the path we have yet to recover from.

Just A Flag?

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/what-this-cruel-war-was-over/396482/

The Confederate Monument
Arlington National Cemetery
en.wikipedia.org

Hello Everyone:

Today yours truly would like to take a break from the usual architecture, historic preservation, urban planning and design subjects and spend time taking about a flag. Not just any flag, the Confederate flag, which has been in the media since the heinous killing, by Dylann Roof, of nine people at bible study class at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.  This flag, labeled by satirist John Oliver a "bad flag," is pregnant with meaning.  For the descendants of the soldiers that fought for the Confederate cause, it represents their heritage and Southern pride.  For the descendants of the millions of men, women, and children of those that were enslaved, it is a symbol of racism and bigotry.  However, despite the clarion calls to remove the flag from public view, what has not been heard is the reason why the American Civil War was fought.  The quick and easy is ending slavery.  Ta-Nehisi Coates offers his perspective in a recent article for The Atlantic titled "What This Cruel War Was Over."  You may be surprised to learn that the reason for the Civil War was not as clear cut as most of us had been taught in school.

Gov. Nikki Haley with state officials
Charleston, South Carolina
ibtimes.com 

Last Monday, June 22, 2015, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley stood on the capitol grounds and announced her support for the removal of the Confederate flag.  Mr. Coates writes, "South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley asserted that killer Dylann roof had a sick and twisted view of the flag which did not reflect the people in out state who respect and in many ways revere it."  Like Mr. Coates, yours truly does not believe that those who respect and revere the flag support mass murder. Nevertheless, Mr. Coates adds, "But on the question of whose view of the Confederate Flag is more twisted, she is almost certainly wrong."

Most assuredly, Mr. Roof's belief that black lives do not matter beyond subjection is sick and twisted in the same way as the ideology of those who created the flag was sick and twisted.  There is no denying the fact that the Confederate flag was directly connected to the cause; that cause was white supremacy, pure and simple.  This is not a revisionist, politically correct version of history. There is no need to parse the words of those who raised the flag.  Their meaning is clear as day.  We here at  historicpca.blogspot.com spend time talking about heritage, a word that has gained a lot of traction and will continue do so as this issue plays out in the media.  Therefore, like Mr. Coates, blogger feels obliged to discuss the exact meaning of the word "heritage" within the Confederate context.

Secession of Southern States
maps.com

 Our discussion of the meaning of Confederate heritage begins, fittingly, in South Carolina, the first to secede in December 1860 following the election of Abraham Lincoln.  It was also in South Carolina that the first shots of the Civil War were fired on Fort Sumter.  Mr. Coates writes, "The state's casus belli was neither vague nor hard to comprehend:"

...A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, who opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.  He to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.  This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have used to inaugurate a new policy hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

Slave cabin in Barbour County near Eufaula, Alabama
gutenberg.org

In using slavery as their call to arms, South Carolina was less an anomaly than a leader, setting the direction for other states to follow, Mississippi for example:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-the greatest material interest of the world.  Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.  This products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.  These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.  That blow has long been aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation.  There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin...

Jefferson Davis c.1853
en.wikipedia.org

Southern threats of secession, over slavery, was not new. Jefferson Davis, the eventual president of the Confederacy, rattled the secession saber should the nation elect a Republican president:

I say to you here as I have said to the Democracy of New York, if it should ever com to pass that the Constitution shall be perverted to the destruction of our rights so that we shall have the mere right as a feeble minority unprotected by the barrier of the Constitution to giver an ineffectual negative vote in the Halls of Congress, we shall then bear to the federal government the relation our colonial fathers did to the British crown, and if we are worthy of our lineage we will in that event redeem our rights even if it be through the process of revolution.

One hundred fifty years removed from the conflict, it is difficult to comprehend the strident adherence to human bondage.  Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, "...at $3.5 billion, the four million enslaved African Americans in the South represented the country's greatest financial asset.  And the dollar amount does not hint at the force of enslavement as a social institution."  By the start of the Civil War in April 1861, slaveholders firmly believed that slavery "...was one of the great organizing institutions in world history, superior to the 'free society' of the North."  Quoting Jefferson Davis again:

You too know, that among us, the white men have an equality resulting from a presence of a lower caste, which cannot exist where white men fill the position here occupied by the servile race.  The mechanic who comes among us, employing the less intellectual labor of the African, takes the position which only master-workman occupies where all the mechanics are white, therefore it is that our mechanics hold their position of absolute equality among us.

James Henry Hammond
newdealradio.com

Black slaves as the foundation of white equality was common theme for slaveholders. In the famous "Cotton Is King" speech, James Henry Hammond drew a comparison between the presumed wage slavery of the North with black slavery as the bedrock of white equality in the South:

The difference between us is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people, and too much employment either...We do not think that whites should be slaves by law or necessity.  Our slaves are black, of another and inferior race.  The status in which we have placed them is an elevation.  They are elevated from the the condition in which God  first created them...They are happy, content, unaspiring, and utterly incapable, from intellectual weakness, ever to give us any trouble by their aspirations...

Antebellum farm
sunnycv.com

In the minds of Southern nationalists, the end of slavery would not only result in the loss of property but also the destabilization of white equality, therefore, the odd Southern way of life:

If the policy of the Republicans is carried out, according to the programme indicated by the leaders of the party, and the South submits, degradation and ruin must overwhelm alike all class of citizens in the Southern States.  The slave-holder and non-slave-holder must ultimately share the same fate-all be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes, stand side by side; or else there will be an eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting and destroying all the resources of the country.

Antebellum cotton fields
awesomestories.com

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, "Slaveholders were not modest about the perceived virtues of their way of life.  In the years leading up to the Civil War, calls for expansion into the tropics reached a fever pitch,..."

Looking into the possibilities of the future, regarding the magnificent country of tropical America, which lies in the path of our destiny on this continent, we may see an empire as powerful and gorgeous as ever was picture in our dreams of history.  What is that empire?  It is an empire founded on military ideas; representing the noble peculiarities of Southern civilization;...having control of the two dominant staples of the world's commerce-cotton and sugar; possessing the highways of the world's commerce; surpassing all empires of the age in strength of its geographical position;...

Edward Pollard
nps.gov

These are the words of journalist Edward Pollard, from the book Black Diamonds Gathered In The Darkey Homes Of The South.  This point was clarified in 1858 by Mississippi Senator Albert Gallatin Brown:

...And a footing in Central America will powerfully aid us in acquiring those other states.  It will render them less valuable to other powers of the earth, and thereby diminish competition with us.  Yes, I want these countries for the spread of slavery.  I would spread the blessings of slavery, like the religion of our Divine Master, to the uttermost ends of the earth, and rebellious and wicked as the Yankees have been, I would even extend it to them.

I would not force it upon them, as I would force religion upon them, but I would preach it to them, as I would preach the gospel...

Therefore, when the Civil War began in 1861, the Union forces did not face a pacific Southern society simply wanting to be left alone.  They faced an aggressive power, an entire society predicated on the enslavement of a third of its inhabitants with aspirations of expansion beyond its borders.  Three months before the War began, Florida secessionists stated the point directly:

At the South, and with our People of course, slavery is the element of all value, and destruction of that destroys all that is property.  This party, now soon to take possession of the powers of the Government, is sectional, irresponsible to us, and driven on by an infuriated fanatical madness that defies all opposition, must inevitably destroy every vestige or right growing out of property in slaves...

Civil War soldiers
duckofminerva.com

As the War, predicted to only last months, stretched out into years, the Confederacy's raison d'être threatened its diplomatic efforts.  Further, fighting for slavery presented challenges to its foreign diplomatic efforts, thus the Confederacy began to emphasize "state rights" over slavery-the first instance of what became the basis for the Lost Cause" mythology.  Ironically, it was the Confederates themselves who first questioned the whole "Lost Cause" mythology.  One Richmond, Virginia-based newspaper had this to say:

'The people of the South,' says a contemporary, 'are not fighting for slavery but for independence.'  Let us look into this matter. It is an easy task, we think, to show up this new-fangled heresy-a heresy calculated to do us no good, for it cannot deceive foreign statesmen nor peoples, not mislead any one here nor in Yankeeland...Our doctrine is this: WE ARE FIGHTING FOR INDEPENDENCE THAT OUR GREAT AND NECESSARY DOMESTIC INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY SHALL BE PRESERVED, and for the preservation of other institutions of which slavery is the groundwork.

Alfred R. Waud Mustered Out
Little Rock Arkansas April 20, 1865
Harper's Weekly May 19, 1866
memory.loc.gov

As the Lost Cause gained traction during the Reconstruction Era (1865-77), many veterans were still clear about why they rallied around the Confederate flag.  Ta-Nehisi Coates quotes Confederate commander John S. Mosby, I've never hear of any other cause than slavery.  The Confederate Veteran, the official journal of the United Confederate Veterans, offer this view in 1906:

The kindliest relation that ever existed between the two races in this country, or that ever will, was the ante-bellum relation of master and slave-a relation of confidence and responsibility on the part of the master and of dependence and fidelity on the part of the slave.

In 1917, the publication singled out Nathan Bedford Forrest for particular praise:

Great and trying times always produce great leaders, and one was at hand-Nathan Bedford Forrest, His plan, the course left open.  The organization of a secret government.  A terrible government; a government that would govern in spire of black majorities and Federal bayonets.  This secret government was organized in every community in the South, and this government is known in history as the Ku Klux Clan...

Bedford Forrest should always be held in reverence by every son and daughter of the South as long as memory hold dear the noble deeds and service of men for the good of others, on this earth.  What mind is base enough to think of  what might have happened but for Bedford Forrest and his 'invisible' but victorious army.

Nathan Bedford Forrest
en.wikipedia.org

Confederate veterans and their descendants were remarkably consistent in their praise of the Klan's terrorism.  Mr. Coates writes, "White domination was the point.  Slavery failed.  Domination prevailed nonetheless.."  In a 1931 speech before the United Daughters of the Confederacy,  titled "The Cause Was Not Entirely Lost," Florida Senator Duncan Fletcher argued:

The South fought to preserve race integrity.  Did we lose that?  We fought to maintain free white dominion.  Did we lose that?  The States are in control of the people.  Local self-government, democratic government, obtains.  That was not lost.  The rights of the sovereign States, under the Constitution, are recognized.  We did not lose that.  I submit that what is called "The Lost Cause" was not so much "lost" as is sometimes supposed.

Truth, nothing was really lost because for a century following the Civil War, White Supremacy ruled the region.  As that century wound down, as activists began challenging that supremacy, its stalwarts looked for a familiar symbol.  You guessed it, that flag. Invocations of the Confederate flag went hand-in-hand with invocations of days gone by.  Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, "But by then, neo-Confederates had begun walking back their overt defense of slavery."  the United Daughters of the Confederacy magazine opined:

Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson, Nathan Bedford Forrest, Raphael Semmes and the 600,000 soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy did not fight for a "Lost Cause."  They fought to repel invasion, and in defense of their Constitutional liberties bequeathed them by their forefathers...

The glorious blood-red Confederate Battle Flag that streamed ahead of the Confederate soldiers in more than 2000 battles is not a conquered banner.  It is an emblem of Freedom.

Civil War battle scene
usslave.blogspot.com

By the fifties and early sixties, it was no longer acceptable to speak precisely about the exact nature of that freedom.  You get the gist of what that freedom is, given that the article turns into an attack on desegregation:

Since the Supreme Court decision of May 17, 1954, reversed what had been the Supreme Law of the land for 75 years and declared unconstitutional the laws of 17 states under which segregated school systems were established, the thinking people have aroused from their lethargy in respects to State's Rights.

From this, we can track the progression of the "Heritage Not Hate" argument.  The blatant defense of slavery was out of fashion.  Coincidently, those who hold the flag in high esteem, also held the mechanism of white supremacy of that period of time.  There were moments when the façade dropped.  In 1997, during a debate over the flag, South Carolina State Representative John Graham Altman pontificated, Get out and get a job.  Quit shooting each other.  Quit having illegitimate babies.

Bree Newsome
vladtv.com

Kudos to Governor Nikki Haley for calling for the removal of the Confederate flag.  However, she has rightly engendered criticism for couching her call for its removal as a matter of form. Presently, efforts to take down the flag are being viewed as matter of politesse, something we can agree to disagree about, Bree Newsome's decisive move not withstanding.  However David French concedes that despite the fact the flag is painful symbol  Writer Ian Tuttle adds that removing it might offer relief to those genuinely hurt.  Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney tweeted, To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred.  South Carolina senator Tom Davis claimed The flag has been misappropriated by hate groups.

#LoveWins
boingboing.net

Manners have replaced the myth of the Lost Cause.  Both rooted in a lie.  The Confederate flag should not come down because it is politically correct, offensive to African Americans.  It is offensive to every single American.   The calls for the removal of this symbol of hate comes at the same time as a symbol of love is raised.  This is America.  At a time when we, as a nation, still must dissect the meaning of a flag and the reason why 750,000 African men, women, and children died and Abraham Lincoln was killed we are redefining what love is.  Hate. Love.  When is a flag just a flag.

What Are The Characteristics Of A Creative Neighborhood?

http://www.citylab.com/work/2015/05/what-a creative-neighborhood-looks/393038/

Creative neighborhood in Toronto, Canada
Greg Spencer
citylab.com

Hello Everyone:

Today we are going to take a look at creative neighborhoods. Specifically, with the help Richard Florida's CityLab article "What a Creative Neighborhood Looks Like," we are going to discuss the specific characteristics of a creative neighborhood. Mr. Florida writes, "Innovation and creativity are the basic engines of economic development in cities, regions and nations.  But what makes some places more innovative than others?  How do certain neighborhoods come to specialize in different types of creativity?"

Regional Studies recently published a detailed new study by Mr. Florida's Martin Prosperity Institute and University of Toronto colleague Greg Spencer at the types of neighborhoods that attract the high-tech industries versus those that foster cultural endeavors.  Mr. Spencer focused on Canada's three city-regions: Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal.  Mr. Spencer defined the high-tech (science-based) industries: spanning computer, software, pharmaceuticals and medicine, as well as research and development, while "creative" industries include film and video, music, radio and television, and design, as well as independent artists, writers and performers.

Summary of neighborhood characteristics
Greg Spencer
citylab.com

To understand the neighborhood differences, Mr. Spencer used "...unique and detail data form the commercial analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet on the locations of 1.4 million business in the years 2001, 2006 and 2011.  The study asks: To what degree do these two main types of innovative activity prefer urban versus suburban neighborhoods?"

The big conclusion of the study ...is that these two types of activities-science-based versus creative industries-are based in very different kinds of locations.  The table on the left, excerpted from the study, provides a summary of the differences.  In essence, the science-based industries are situated in low density suburban locations.  The creative industries are more urban based, "...dense, closer to the core of the city, walkable, mixed-use and often served by public."

'Creative' Neighborhood and 'Science' Neighborhood
Greg Spencer
citylab.com

The diagrams on the left outline the differences between science and creative neighborhoods in the city-regions Mr. Spencer studied.  The creative neighborhoods, on the left hand side, present greater density, more compact street grids, and more clustered firms.  The science neighborhoods, on the right hand side, are more spread out.  A second set of diagrams demonstrate land use patterns in each of the neighborhoods.  Mr. Florida writes, "The creative neighborhoods have a mix of residential, commercial, and government uses, interspersed by parks.  The high-tech neighborhoods are far more dominated by just industrial and commercial uses-typical of office and industrial parks."

Land-use pattern of 'creative' and 'science' neighborhoods
Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver
Greg Spencer
citylab.com

Greg Spencer also mentions that creative workers are more likely to live in or near the neighborhoods in which they work, while science and engineering workers live farther away and are more likely to commute by car.  A point worth mentioning is that in high-tech neighborhoods, clusters also tend to form.  Scientists and engineers form classic nerdistan living configurations near said office parks.  Mr. Spencer uses a third set of diagrams to illustrate the locations of amenities such as cafés, restaurants, and bars.  Once again we see a similar pattern.  The creative neighborhoods have a denser amount of food establishments, while the science-based neighborhoods have a more diffuse amount of restaurants and bars.

Locations of amenities in creative and science neighborhoods
Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver
Greg Spencer
popist.com

Food establishments do more than nourish the palette, they provide a place for creative types to seek out networking opportunities.  They also attract people from other neighborhoods and by doing so extend the time period during each that the neighborhoods [are active].  Mr. Spencer note This adds to the social vibrancy of the creative neighborhoods and possibilities for social interactions that are less available in places that science industries tend to inhabit.  Think the ubiquitous coffee house, club, yoga studio, Whole Foods, and an assortment of third spaces that function in a similar manner as "...offices and conference rooms for scientists and engineers."

Both neighborhoods have an institutional anchor.  For example, a typical anchor for a high-tech neighborhood  would engineering firms and/or research universities that specialize in science-based fields.  Typical anchors in creative neighborhoods can include universities with specialities in the humanities, fine and performing arts, design schools, galleries, and performance venues.

Yonge Street at Temperance (2008)
Toronto, Canada en.wikipedia.org

Greg Spencer infers that the different neighborhood patterns are the result of two basic structural differences between the two types of firms and industries.  The science-based industries are typical much larger than the creative firms.  Mr. Spencer cites the information he gleaned from Dun & Bradstreet that indicates ...the former are two and a half times bigger-with an average of 17 versus 7 employees.

Second, partly the result of this statistic, creative workers are more dependent on social networks.  By this, we can infer something other than Facebook or Twitter, although Blogger speculates that they are part of the way creative workers maintain friendships and familial relationships.  Mr. Spencer uses data from the Canadian General Social Survey which found that creative workers have the largest social networks of any class of worker.  On average these individuals report maintaining 60 relationships with family, friends, and acquaintance, wrote Mr. Spencer.  He continues, while those working in science and technology occupations have on average 46 connections...this disparity is almost entirely accounted  for by the number of local (same region) acquaintances that each group maintains relationships with.  Again, Blogger wonders if these connections are actual people or connections made online.  What we can conclude is that "...smaller creative firms thus benefit from and require denser conditions in neighborhoods to function."

Apartments in Montreal
Montreal, Canada
jetsetcitizen.com

Office space rents for smaller creative firms are typically higher than larger science-based industries.  Mr. Spencer writes, This suggests that traditional urban economic cost-based factors are not the main drivers of location decisions...Rather there seems to be a willingness, particularly of creative firms, to pay more in order to in close physical proximity to similar businesses.

Despite their myriad of differences, both types of neighborhoods tend to cluster in the same city or metropolitan regions.  Greg Spencer points out, 55 percent of Canada's science-based industries and 57 percent of its creative industries are concentrated in the city-regions of Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, which house just 35 percent of the country's population.  Further, over the last several years, start-up companies have taken on a more urban orientation than the larger more entrenched tech companies that gave form to the study.  Richard Florida reminds the reader, "As I have written here previously, the urban districts of San Francisco now top Silicon Valley in start-ups and venture capital investments while New York City and London have generated large high-tech start-up clusters as well."

Finally, the overarching question becomes, "How do city leaders who want to attract different kinds of businesses and people go about doing that?"  Mr. Florida kind of answers his question, "It turns out this is harder for creative industries than for their science-based counterparts."  Greg Spencer also responds, Most of the creative neighborhoods highlighted in [the] paper were not produced intentionally but rather evolved into what they are due to their highly flexible and adaptable characteristics.  This in the end may hold the secret to any successful marriage between urban design and economic development.  

These Buildings Really Do Have Redeeming Values

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/05/t-magazine/architects-libesking-zaha-hadid-selldorf-norman-foster.html?_r=0

Tour Montparnasse, completed in 1973
Paris, France
parisbyfoot.com

Hello Everyone:

If you go to any city around the world, you will find buildings that are so hated by everyone, that if it blew up, no one would miss it. Recently, Alexandra Lange of T Magazine in the New York Tiimes, spoke to seven leading architects to find out if there was anything lovable about some of the most hated buildings around the world.

First building in need of some love is the Tour Montparnasse in Paris, France.  Daniel Libeskind came to the defense of this high-rise, It's legandary for being the most hated building in Paris.  I want to defend it not because it's particularly because of the idea it represents.  Take a look at the picture on the left, the Tour Montparnasse next to the Eiffel Tower.  It dwarfs the famed landmark.  When the high-rise went was completed in 1973, ...Parisians panicked when they saw it, and when they abandoned the tower they also abandoned the idea of a high-density sustainable city.  Future high-rise were exiled to some distant neighborhood.  Mr. Libeskind continues, Parisians reacted aesthetically,...,but they failed to consider the consequences of what it means to be vital, living city versus a museum city.  Good point, are cities living, breathing, organic beings or objects encased in amber?  Yours truly will go with the former.  Another good point that Mr. Libeskind makes is, Parisians sentimentalize their notions of city, but with the carbon footprint, the waste of resources, our shrinking capacity, we have no choice but to build good high-rise buildings that are affordable. The Tour Montparnasse may not be the loveliest building in Paris but it is a harbinger of what a future city will look like.

Orange County Government Center
Paul Rudolph, 1963
Goshen, New York
nytimes.com

Zaha Hadid leaps to the defense of Paul Rudolph's Orange County Government Center in Goshen, New York.  The Government Center has been the subject of intense preservation efforts.  Jenny Xie of Curbed recently reported that Judge Christopher Cahill, of the New York State Supreme Court, ruled that no demolition should occur before July. (http://www.curbed.com/archives/2015/...orange-county-government-center-goshen.ph...)  The clock is ticking rapidly.  Zaha Hadid told Alexandra Lange, The 1960s were a remarkable moment of social reform.  The ideas of change, liberation, and freedom were critical.  Now people think public buildings should be more flowery, but these were times people did tough projects.  The Orange County Government Center is anything but flowery. Yet, this Brutalist landmark has a place within the trajectory of modern architecture.  Ms. Hadid defends the building, There is an integrity within the design displays a commitment to engagement and connectivity.  As a center for civic governance, it enacted democracy through spatial integration, not through the separation of elected representative from their constituents...Similar buildings around the world are also suffering from similar neglect, however Ms. Hadid explains, ...sensitive renovation and new programming reveal a profound lightness and generosity, creating exciting and popular spaces where people can connect.  By Ms. Hadid's estimation, There are no additions to make it polite or cute.  It is what it is.

This just in: The World Monument Fund has announced that a state judge has dismissed a lawsuit that would have prevented a $71 million plan to overhaul and expand the Orange County Government Center, clearing the way for demolition  (http://www.recordonline.com)

Empire State Plaza, completed in 1976
Albany, New York
bluffton.edu

Annebelle Selldorf grudgingly defends the Empire State Plaza in Albany, New York, Against my better judgment, I like this complex.  It's sculptural, architecture abstraction to the extreme.  Ms. Selldorf waxes prosaic over ...the scale of the skyline exudes a sense of identity and strength for Albany, while at the pedestrian level the Plaza plays an important role in the community.  Blogger can definitely understand how the plaza serves as a gathering point for Albany residents. Admittedly, the Plaza is not the most flowery or polite building but it does have a sense of monumentality to it.  Ms. Selldorf acknowledges, Monumentality always suggests supreme power, and that's scary.  I somehow think that if you could populate the Plaza with more gardens, and make it feel more part of everyday life-which they' tried to with farmer's markets and using the basin for ice skating-then it wouldn't feel so hostile.  Warmth and a sense of welcome are what Ms. Selldorf  feels are necessary to give the space a sense of life because, Then it becomes an outlet for the expression of our democratic values of assembly and freedom of speech.

Vele di Scampia 1962-75
Franz di Salvo
Naples, Italy
land-fabricators.tumblr.com

This self-contained "megastructure" looks like one of the most unlovable buildings of all time but not Ada Tolla.  Ms. Tolla told Alexandra Lange, If somebody put this complex in front of me right without adding context, any history, I would consider it a really strong piece of architecture.  Before your eyes roll completely pop out of your heads, consider this, At the time it was conceived, the complex was positive, optimistic and progressive.  It embodies the idea of the megastructure as the mechanism that can solve the pressing problem of overpopulation and saturation of the city center.  A sort of riff on Le Corbusier's "machine for living."  This sense of optimism was expressed in the planning for the complex: roads named for Italian Socialist or Marxists figures.  The interior courtyard references the most modest and vivid moments of Naples life.  However, the "megastructure" was cursed.  Ms. Tolla explains, It wasn't built as specified; value-engineering change the structure and reduced the interior courtyards, therefore limiting the amount of light. None of the planned public spaces,...were ever constructed.  Ms. Tolla concludes, For me it is important to recognize that the Vele is not a failure of architecture, but a failure in execution and management.

Tempelhof Airport
Ernst Sagebiel
Berlin, Germany
en.wikipedia.org

Tempelhof Airport is unloved because it was adjacent to a concentration that interned journalists, politicians, Jewish people, and other "undesirables."  Ironically, it was designed by Ernst Sagebiel, who studied under one most prolific German-Jewish masters Erich Mendelsohn.  However, eminent English architect Norman Foster told Ms. Lange, Tempelhof is one o the really great buildings of the modern age, an yet it is inevitable that is not necessarily celebrated by everyone.  Despite its associations with the National Socialist regime, the airport began its path to redemption in 1948-9 with the Berlin Airlifts, delivering food to West Berlin.  Mr. Foster continues, The airport is full of contradictions and paradoxes.  It has an austere facade, which is not so fascist and almost appear in Sweden...The architecture is heroic, not pompous, empty, vacuous sense , but as engineering that really lifts the spirits.  Monuments, if you trace their ancestry, can reveal disturbing things about the past.  Nevertheless, they have enduring qualities which, viewed on their own merits, are perhaps an example to us.

BT Tower, completed in 1965
Eric Bedford and G.R. Yeats
London, England
file-magazine.com

 Go ahead, crack wise if you must.  Amanda Levette told Ms. Lange, What fascinates me is that in its time the BT Tower was a building that was entirely about its function as a telecommunications tower.  Its purpose was its height...The picture on left shows the BT Tower with its satellites, which have been removed making the tower's purpose redundant.  When it was completed in 1965, it was the tallest building in London.  Ms. Levette continues, It was a marker of arrival if you were coming from the north.  That, in the context of London's skyline now, is extraordinary....High rises today are about exploiting the skyline for private gain.  Amanda Levette wonders ...if the satellites and antennae shouldn't be reinstated to communicate its purpose as enduring symbol of the the moment in the 1960s when technology propelled Britain onto the international stage...

Centre Georges Pompidou, 1977
Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers
Paris, France
pictify.com

Finally, what is so unlovable about the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, France that would cause a Parisienne to club Richard Rogers (one of the architects) over the head with her umbrella?  When it opened in 1977, horrified Parisians protested the way its brazen industrial aesthetic clashed with the historic fabric of the Marais district and the city itself.  However, it is this clash that excited Vincent Van Duysen, I admire its boldness and openness as a building that participates with-and its woven into-its city, its time.  It was without any respect for the environment...Centre Pompidou does seem to thumb its nose at the eponymous French stone, light grey roofs, and natural colors.  Mr. Van Duysen continues, On the other hand, the building has this democratic purpose because it attracts how many millions every year...It reversed the typical model of a museum into something was engaging and inviting to the public.  Architecture at that time needed to do things differently, like a shock.  The shock liberates a lot of emotions and perceptions.

Blight Fight In The Crescent City

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/nw-orleans-what-works-117656.html?hp=b3.VUk0NpVikq

Rubble in the Lower Ninth Ward
New Orleans, Louisiana
David Metraux
davidmetraux.com

Hello Everyone:

Today we are moving from urban planning and police violence to battling blight in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans.  Since the devastating storm in August 2005, New Orleans seemed to be stuck in some sort of inertia.  Thousands of homes were abandoned. left to rot; overtaken by weeds.  Eric Velasco's article for Politico, titled, "The Battle for New Orleans,"  examines Mayor Mitch Landrieu's initiative to get rid of the blight and return the "Crescent City" to its glory.

When Mayor Landrieu took office in 2010, five years after the hurricane, he took a good look around the city and got furious.  Mayor Landrieu told Mr. Velasco, basically property owners walking away from their responsibility and leaving for the rest of the public to clean up their mess.  It was not like the city had done nothing toward cleaning up the rubble and aiding the displaced residents rebuild.  Mr. Velasco writes, "Many of home and business owners had rebuilt.  The public and private sector had helped other displaced residents comeback."  The government purchased and demolished abandoned properties from absentee landlords and owners.  Regardless, New Orleans was still first in blight, when Mayor Landrieu took office, beating out Detroit, Flint, Cleveland, and Baltimore.

New Orleans, Louisiana montage
en.wikipedia.org

The Mayor decided it was far past time for errant property owners to take responsibility or step aside.  Quoting Mayor Landrieu, Mr. Velasco writes,

I told my team we have have to go everywhere in America where they're solving difficult problems...we have to figure not only what they're doing but how they're doing it.  And then we have to bring best practices here.

City officials did go everywhere in America where they were solving difficult problems. The city implemented ideas from cities such as Boston and Philadelphia-everything from dedicated "...telephone hotlines for reporting blight to market studies that helped planners understand where best to focus efforts."  New Orleans added new tools to combat blight: it created a state-of-the-art database to follow the status of each blighted property; passing laws that strengthened the city's ability to quickly enforce blight codes; targeting specific neighborhoods that were on the brink of collapse because of the additional blight induced crime and instability.

Jackson Square, French Quarter
New Orleans, Louisian
bugbog.com

By the end of Mayor Landrieu's first term, 10,000 of the city's 44,000 blight residential properties were either demolished, rehabilitated or cleared when the program launched in 2010.  At present, a year into the mayor's second term, the tally is up to 13,000. Ryan Berni, a senior aide to the mayor, told Eric Velasco, Hurricane Katerina was an awful event...But it presented the opportunity for New Orleans to become this country's laboratory and hub for innovation and change.

The blight battle has been aided by a resurgence in the city's pre-Katrina population. The foodie-heaven city now boasts 1,400 restaurants.  Technology companies moving into New Orleans have helped diversify the economy.  Tourism, New Orleans's top employer, has all but returned-"...9.5 million visitors spent a $6.8 billion in 2014, drawn by Mardi Gras, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Sugar Bowl college football game, convention, cruise ships and myriad parties the city and its neighborhoods throw on any given week."

Buildings and Structures in New Orleans
Amusement Parks
snipview.com

Nevertheless, for all its progress, New Orleans still has about the same number of pre-Katrina blighted properties.  Thus, proving that blight maybe easy to spot but notoriously difficult to remedy.  Despite the good news about the recovery efforts, affordable house remains scarce.  It is the same sad story as other cities with scarce affordable house: low-income and moderate income residents are being priced out of the market. More acutely, progress in the recovery process is achingly slow in many communities with "...concentrated, long-term decay and poverty like the Lower Ninth Ward..."

Once upon a time, the Lower Ninth boasted the highest rate of African-American homeownership in New Orleans.  When the hurricane made landfall, 18,000 people lived in 5,400 houses and apartment in the community.  In 2014, a paltry 1,800 residences received mail-an indicator of just how many people have not returned to the community, resuming their lives elsewhere, and just how little the neighborhood has recovered.  In a Hollywood shout out, Eric Velasco mention's actor Brad Pitt's organization Make It Right (http://www.makeitright.org) has built 100 homes in the Lower Ninth and have plans to build 50 additional units.  New Orleans has spent millions to build new community centers and fire stations.

Garden District
New Orleans, Louisiana
neworleanscondotrends.com

Eric Velasco cites Henry Simms's experiences following Katrina as an example of the difficulty in dealing with blight.  Mr. Simms lives in the Lower Ninth, near Flood Street. Spread out over eleven blocks of Flood Street only three dozen residences are occupied. Pointing to the blank slabs Mr. Simms tells Mr. Velasco, We had houses along this street...Look at all the slabs.  There was a house here, a house over there and three over there before Katrina.

Next, he points to the dilapidated property around the corner.

See that house...They ain't torn it down yet

He points to another building on Flood Street, abandoned and falling apart.

The owners?...They're in Ohio

Solar powered homes in the Lower Ninth Ward
news-archive.solarenergy-usa.com

New Orleans was buried in blight long before Katrina

Sad but true.  In what seems like some foreshadowing, Mr. Velasco notes, "A national nonprofit prepared a study on how to address the problem, its report due on September 1, 2005.  Katrina hit New Orleans two days earlier, creating even more blight in even more places."  The population dramatically dropped and 105,000 suffered near-to-catastrophic damage or were just destroyed.  Several co-authors of the pre-Hurricane blight study were enlisted to develop Mayor Mitch Landrieu's strategy.  The goals were simple according to Jeff Hebert head of the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, Preserve houses that needed to be preserved, demolish houses that needed to go and maintain vacant lots.

Homes in the Lower Ninth Ward
nytimes.com

How these goals were to be achieved were more complex.  Mr. Hebert continues, We needed to understand the real estate market and have a strategy for infill development to push the comeback.  And that all had to be tracked.  To help this endeavor, the Center for Community Progress established in January 2010 with initial funding from the Charles Stewart Mott and Ford Foundations, joined New Orleans civic officials in their study tour of places such as Cleveland, Boston, and New York.

First on the agenda was creating a method for efficiently counting the number of blighted properties and tracking code enforcement. This task is easier in theory than practice.  The chief obstacle in quantifying the data was compiling information from twelve city departments who are involved in the bight flight was excruciatingly difficulty because they were not linked.

Jungleland?
americaswire.org

For 18 months we were hacking at a system that wasn't built to do what we were trying to do, Oliver Wise, the head of the Office of Performance and Accountability, told Mr. Velasco.  What those charged with the task of fighting endemic blight is some sort of one-touch summery for each lot (an app if you will) that presented information on hearing dates and permits pulled.  Mr. Hebert picks up the conversation, We had to find a solution innovative enough so we could draw a line around part of the city and have data pop up for every property inside that line.

The inspiration for this type of tracking software was found on a fact-finding trip to Baltimore and Philadelphia.  Back in New Orleans, civic officials began to craft software specific to their own lot-by-lot system that would provide the necessary information needed to combat blight and assist in the creation of efficiency performance standards.  All the data is available online at:
https://data.nola.gov/browse?tags=blight and blightstatus.noa.gov/.  The availability of this information is part of ongoing efforts to engage the citizens of New Orleans in the recovery process and mend broken public trust.