Resolutions

http://www.citylab.com

"No"
themouthymermaid.com

Hello Everyone:

El Niño has landed in Southern California.  The rain has not deterred your intrepid blogger from spending time in the blogosphere.

The New Year is a time for making resolutions.  Lose weight, exercise more, stop smoking, eat better and so on.  The editors at CityLab hope you will also resolve to finally retire all those dated terms and stubborn myths that persisted throughout the previous year.  To help you out, our editors have compiled a list of "Stubborn Myths and Dated Terms We'd Like to Retire in 2016."  It may not help you stop smoking but it will make better use of words and phrases that have entered our vocabulary.

"Uber for Everything"
twitter.com

"Uber for X:"  Thanks to Uber's early success in capturing our need for on demand services, Linda Poon was not at all surprised to see startups mimic Uber's business model.  We have become very demanding; insisting grocery delivery, haircuts, cleaning services, and dog walking services when we want it.  Sounds fantastic, right?  Absolutely.  The only problem with Uber's business model was outsourcing its labor to independent contractors in order to keep the costs low, something the company still needs to work out.  Blogger will admit to checking out Uber once or twice and was pleasantly surprised at how its car fare measured against a traditional cab ride.  Linda Poon sums it up, "At CityLab, we're all for entrepreneurial spirit, but we'd love to write about some startup in the new year that offer something more than just an 'Uber for X' copycat."

Charles Dickens Museum
London, England
travesty.com

"A Tale of Two Cities:" Baltimore and Ferguson, not Tales of Two Cities.  Brentin Mock writes, "This dichotomous lens may have been applicable in the time of Dickens...,but anyone who used this term as a lens to understand a place in 2015 was not looking carefully."  The contemporary urban landscape is not nearly as fractured along race or income.  Reducing tragedies like Freddie Gray and Michael Brown to binaries of shared experiences denies the bigger picture.  Mr. Mock writes, "A queer black woman has a different city experience than a straight black woman; a Mexican-American construction worker has a different experience than a Cuban-American police officer."  Therefore, the phrase "A Tale of Two Cities" to describe any story obliterates a plethora of unique points of view.  Time to bury this phrase.

Alphabet Book For Hipster Babies
babble.com

 "Artisanal:" Yes, please consign this one to the vocabulary rubbish bin immediately.  If there was ever an over used, vaguely defined word it is artisanal.  This word was used to describe anything from very tasty sea salted caramels to the macaroni art my youngest nephew made in preschool (He is in fourth grade now).  Jessica Leigh Hester complains, "This word has been casually tossed around to refer to anything that borders on twee; it's lost its status as something that nods to a skilled trade or impressive feat."  Here, here.  Let yours truly be quite blunt about the matter.  Unless you are promoting something made by an actual skilled artisan or something genuinely unique like a life-sized Statue of Liberty made entirely from sea-salt caramels, for pity sake please use another adjective.  Pass the caramels.

The "Walkie-Talkie" Tower
London, England
standard.co.uk

"Eyesore:" yours truly admits to using this word to describe disgust over badly designed spaces and places like the image on the left.  The word also drives Mark Byrnes up a tree, "This word drives me crazy because it's so lazy.  It's used often to express disgust over inadequate infrastructure or buildings that appear to be mere expressions of an architect's ego."  Again, see image on the left.  The next time you feel this word on the tip of your tongue, ask yourself, "Is it dangerous?"  Is it neglected?  Design taste is subjective as are reasons for liking or disliking a structure.  One person's masterpiece is another person's blot upon the landscape.  Therefore, when you express your intense dislike for a place or space, unless it is falling down, please refrain from using the word eyesore.

"Wider Roads-Less Traffic:" makes sense.  Build more roads leads to less traffic congestion.  This is a myth that Eric Jaffe would like to see consigned to eternity.  The logic for this enduring myth is deceptively simple, "If there are 100 cars packed into one highway lane, then building a second should mean there's 50 cars in each."  However, transportation researchers have repeatedly concluded that "...when this new lane gets added the number of cars does''t stay the same.  On the contrary, people who stopped driving out of frustration with traffic now attack the road with enthusiasm unknown to mankind."  While residents of heavily congested metropolitan area may re-enact scenes from Mad Max: Fury Road, the experts refer to this as "induced demand."  Simply stated, "...building more road eventually...leads to more traffic, not less."  Unfortunately, the best way to deal with the situation is grit your teeth, hope your phone has a full battery, and plenty of good music.

Highland Town Parking Day 2013
Baltimore, Maryland
baltimorearts.org

"Creative Placemaking:" in a certain context-i.e. parks, plazas, and other public places-creative placemaking is a good thing.  However, Kriston Capps complains, "The term itself, however, has got to go.  It's an abysmally passive phrase that swaps out artists for nameless planning bureaucrats."  It describes public art without identifying the arts or the work.  "It's a way of framing the power of public art, and calling for investment in public art, without,..., talking about art."  Too often the phrase sounds more like a process: "art is useful insofar as it placemakes."  "Creative Placemaking" become so common that the National Endowment for the Arts embraced it a few years ago.  Since then, it has become apparent that this framework obscures the fact that artist should be involved in making public spaces, not as subcontractors.

A denier
terradaily.com

"Climate Change Doubter:" Human beings can be such sensitive creatures.  When John Metcalfe first started writing about the weather for a Virginia television station, he used the phrase "climate-change denier" to refer to someone who is skeptical about global warming.  He was quickly advised by the station meteorologist to change it because people might find it offensive.  Mr. Metcalfe writes, "Now the term seems to be falling out of favor, to judge from a revision in the AP Stylebook...The AP would have use 'climate-change doubters' or 'those who reject mainstream climate science'..."  Yet "doubter" seems awkward because it refers to a those who argue against climate from a a non-scientific point of view.  They are not dubious about it, they just refuse to acknowledge it.  Therefore, let us consign "skeptic" and "doubter" to the dust heap and return to a more precise word-"denier."

"Hipster Island"
newyorker.tumblr.com"

"Hipster:" if you want to make Sommer Mathis exhaust her lexicon of expletives and mutter incoherently about the how life is not worth living, file a story using the word "Hipster."  Once and for all, what is a hipster?  What do they look like?  Where do they live?  Silver Lake?  Downtown Los Angeles?  What do they eat?  This term lost its usefulness at least a decade ago.  As Ms. Mathis so succinctly puts it, "Either we're all hipsters now, or no one is."

"Illegal:" frequently used in debates over immigration in 2015 and, blogger believes, in 2016 as the Presidential election cycle goes into full swing.  this is a problematic term on so many levels.  Tanvi Misra tells us, "'Illegal' or 'illegal aliens' remained generously...employed in 2015 to refer to immigrant who entered the U.S. without authorization."  In 1970, this was the preferred, less problematic term immigration activists used, according to National Public Radio's Adrian Florido.  Forty-five years later, the phrase has taken on the weight of the prejudices wielded by those who still insist on using the term.  The upside here is that activists, media organizations, Supreme Court justices, and political leaders are all in favor of burying "illegal," in reference to immigrants, for good.

The kids are alright
Matt Bors
mattbors.com

"Millennials:" How do you describe a typically white, upper-middle-class urbanite from a prestigious university more preoccupied with which tech startup to accept a job offer than where the next meal is coming from?  A millennial.  How else would you describe someone born in the eighties and nineties?  This is a convenient way for planners to gauge how much housing and many jobs await the newly graduated young adults.  However, Julian Spector writes, "...the term 'millennials' has proven uniquely capable of absorbing all kinds of meanings beyond a strict temporal boundary."  One can only hope that in the coming year we can move beyond clever euphemisms and catch phrases to describe the generational change and cultural values in a more substantive manner.

"Resilience:" we live in uncertain times that require a certain amount of inner fortitude, an ability to "keep calm and carry on."  Laura Bliss writes, "In these uncertain times, governments, corporations, non-profits, and their leaders all claim 'resilience' as a central goal."  Just exactly, how does one go about about making resilience a central goal?  This is a vaguely defined concept at best; an evasion of accountability at worst.  Ms. Bliss points out, "To judge groups of people by their 'resilience also risks ignoring insufferable conditions under which they may have already been living."  Maintaining the human condition requires an honest, specific plan by those charged with protecting individuals and places.  Therefore, claiming that "resilience" is the central goal without a real action plan is pointless.

Word
hercampus.com

"Wage Gap:" two little words that inadequately sum up a comprehensive term for workplace inequality.  It is Aria Bendix's wish for the New Year that these two words "...encourage a more nuanced understanding of this concept (and how it extends beyond gender) in order to craft more effective policies."

"Sharing Economy:" let yours truly start off by making clear that blogger is not a sharer.  Thus, yours truly welcomed the news that the Associated Press finally banned the use of the term "ride-sharing" in reference to companies such as Uber and Lyft.  Vicky Gan was also thrilled with the news.  Uber, Instacart, Wag (dog walking), and Rinse (laundry service) are not about sharing.  They are about the bottom line.  In 2015, Uber launched its plans for platform domination by integrating itself with other apps, like food delivery.  Ms. Gans writes that Airbnb "...caught flak for its ill-advised ad campaign against regulation in San Francisco."  The word "sharing" implies some sense of altruism.  Regardless if you are consumer of these services or independent contractor with them, be honest with yourself, it is not about sharing, it is about the bottom line.