When Is It Cultural Appropriation?

http://www.latimes.com; April 7, 2018

Hello Everyone:

Welcome to a fresh week on the blog.  It is a hot spring day in sunny Los Angeles and Blogger is feeling energetic.  

Did you hear the news?  The Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the office of Mr. Donald Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen.  The agents seized a number of documents including those related to the ongoing soap opera of "The Porn Star and the President."  Get your popcorn, this is getting good. Juicy news item aside, on to cultural appropriation.

Cultural appropriation is a very thorny issue.  What does cultural appropriation mean?  Yours Truly thinks it might be helpful to pin down a definition before applying it to the newly renovated Yamashiro Restaurant in Hollywood, California.

The venerable Oxford Dictionary defines cultural appropriation as, "the unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another" (en.oxforddictionaries.com; date accessed Apr. 9, 2018).  This differs from cultural appreciation, defined as "taking the time out to learn about different cultures and their traditions (theodysseyonline.com; Mar. 2, 2016, date accessed Apr. 9, 2018)."  The difference between the two is a very fine line.  In other words, wearing a Native American headdress, for the sake of fashion, at a festival, can be considered cultural appropriation.  However, taking the time to learn about Native American culture and the importance of that headdress can be considered cultural appreciation.  That said, Frank Shyong of the Los Angeles Times shared a recent experience in his article "Yamashiro, a century-old Japanese-style castle in Hollywood, tests limits of cultural appropriation debate,"

The Reclining Buddha Roll arrived on a spare white plate, a chilled log of rice and shrimp sliced and stacked to approximate the lumpy outline of a Buddha on his back, each piece dotted with what appeared to be Sriracha sauce.

I looked at the waiter, feeling as though there were some joke I didn't understand.  Was this sushi? Was I in a Japanese restaurant, as I had assumed when I booked a reservation here for my girlfriend's birthday?  Should I apologize to my girlfriend?"

First, a little history about the hodgepodge of cultural references that make up Yamashiro. The name Yamashiro comes from the Japanese words for "Mountain Palace."  In 1911, the Bernheimer Brothers (articles.latimes.com; Oct. 22, 2000; date accessed Apr. 9, 2018) began construction on a hilltop mansion, designed by an American architect, to house their collection of Asian artifacts.  Hundreds of Chinese laborers and imported Japanese materials were used to replicate the palace in the "Yamashiro" province near Kyoto, Japan.  The restaurant and bar, completed in 1914, sits 250 feet above Hollywood Boulevard, very close to the Hollywood and Highland complex (yamashirohollywood.com; date accessed Apr. 9, 2018).

The Bernheimer home later became the site of the 400 Club, an exclusive early social club for the film industry in Hollywood, that historians say helped raise the profile of the new industry.

The building was so closely identified with real Japanese culture that it was vandalized during World  War II, in a fit of anti-Japanese sentiment.  In response, the owner painted it black and converted it to student housing, until it changed owners.  The new owner, Thomas O. Glover, restored the original Asian architecture in 1948 and successfully marketed it as a sushi restaurant and tourist stop.

Mr. Shyong writes, "It is also an inauthentic fantasy of Japanese culture that has generated profits exclusively for non-Japanese people, protected by a listing on the National Register of Historic Places while longtime businesses in Little Tokyo face displacement."

Protests over cultural appropriation are a regular news features.  Currently, every industry has found itself in a quandary over "how we should portray and profit from other cultures--a natural outcome in a world where social media allows people to feedback in real time."  Most recent, Times critic Justin Chang pointed out how the new Wes Anderson movie, Isle of Dog, appears renders Japanese culture and people mute (latimes.com; Mar. 21, 2018; date accessed Apr. 9, 2018).  Amid this criticism, Frank Shyong ponders "How should I feel about Yamashiro?"

Not long after his birthday dinner, Mr. Shyong returned to the restaurant with Michael Okamura, a Little Tokyo historian, and Bill Watanabe, the former president of the Little Tokyo Service Center and community leader.  Mr. Shyong hoped that Messr. Okamura and Watanabe would help him determine if Yamashiro's claims of authenticity had some merit.

The trio quickly discovered that Yamashiro's claims of authenticity was a slippery concept.  Mr. Okamura noted, "The hostess stand seem to be an authentic Japanese tansu, or cabinet, with good construction."  Mr. Watanabe observed that the signs indicating the toilets featured the Japanese word for male and female.  However, next to it were the English words, in chop suey font, a style that in recent years has been dismissed as overly exoticized (wsj.com; June 20, 2012; date accessed Apr. 9, 2018).

The pink and reddish ambient lighting defied analysis.  So did the plaster and wood beam interiors, which suggested to Mr. Okamura, "borderline Swiss-Chalet-style architecture."  The Japanese garden, originally a Chinese garden and later converted, "a fish sculpture with a dragon's head hides among some rocks and paper lanterns."  Michael Okamura observed,

That should be on a roof,.... Actually, I'm not sure what that's supposed to be.

Yamashiro was well known enough that Messr. Okamura and Watanabe visited at least once before.  After the trio finished their meal, Mr. Shyong asked them "whether they were offended by the way the restaurant portrayed Japanese culture or food."

The short answer was "no."  Both gentlemen agreed that it was a tangle of cultural appropriation and authenticity.  However, after a lifetime in the United States, they were used to ingesting "imprecise renderings of Asian culture.  And cultural appropriation is a relatively small sin in a history that includes Japanese internment camps."

Bill Watanbe considered the effect Yamashiro has had on the travails of the Japanese people in the United States.  If anything, it has been a positive effect--"introducing non-Japanese people to Japanese culture and perhaps sparking their interest in it."

Blogger has a confession to make, it was James Clavell's book Shogun, that sparked her interest in Japanese culture.

Frank Shyong writes, "Even those that have argued to preserve Yamashiro as a historical property did not seem to hav the question of its cultural value resolved.  In the 2012 application to the National Park Service arguing for Yamashiro's inclusion, an account of its history veers between emphasizing authenticity and claiming modern interpretation."

The application describes the buildings features as original and traditional as well as Japanese-inspired in the same sentence.  The application highlights the authentic Kaerumata (frog leg) brackets and the origins of the 17th-century pagoda, referring to Yamashiro as "an example of revival architecture, which is supposed to bring new meanings to bygone eras of architecture."

This confused Mr. Shyong and left him wondering "What was the difference between revival architecture and cultural appropriation, if any?"  For the an answer, he turned to Alice Tseng, professor of Japanese architecture at Boston University.

Prof. Tseng was flummoxed,

I'm kind of speechless looking at it,... There are bits and pieces that look Japanese but they don't add up to anything.  To call it a revival would be generous.

The application also argues that Yamashiro is modeled after a famous temple, a claim that Prof. Tseng is skeptical of.  Rightly so because architects building in the Japanese manner in the early 20th-century often relied on picture books, sold to tourists, as their visual guide--"depictions that Tseng says were sometimes inaccurate."

Therefore, if Yamashiro was not authentically Japanese, then it could it be authtentic to Los Angeles?  For that answer, Mr. Shyong turned to eminent architect and critic Alan Hess, best known for his love of Googie architecture and other local cultural curiosities.

Mr. Hess admitted that Yamashiro was not an example of great architecture.  "But it illustrates something that has been a part of Los Angeles's story since the film industry took root,...."  Early L.A. was a city on the western edge of a continent where you could imagine anything, build it, set free from the boundaries of convention and good taste.  Mr. Hess said, "A huge demand for novelty, thanks to Hollywood's proximity, produced a wild variety of vernacular architecture that is today one of the city's most defining visual quality,...."

According to Alan Hess, "In a city famous for the mass production of make-believe, Yamashiro's fantasy of Japanese culture is worth preserving,...."  He said,

People came here because they were allowed to do things they could not do anywhere else in the world.  This expresses that part of our history.

Could not agree more, just check out the wildly expressive Clifton's Cafeteria, or the giant doughnut that sits atop Randy's Doughnuts.  Giant doughnuts and buildings shaped like tamales aside, what about a community like Little Tokyo?

Los Angeles without Little Tokyo is unimaginable but the rising rents are threatening to price the longtime Japanese American businesses that do not have the same protections that historic properties like Yamashiro do.  Mr. Shyong reports, "Some of the buildings in Little Tokyo are protected by a historic district, the businesses and the people are not."  Legacy business programs could bring some tax relief and other protection for longtime small businesses struggling to make escalating rents and property values but, strangely, no such program exists in L.A.

Little Tokyo community organizer Justin Saka told Mr. Shyong, We're worried that Little Tokyo is going to become Little Tokyp in name only.

"Cultural neighborhoods like Little Tokyo, Chinatown, Leimert Park and Boyle Heights often struggle to attract the same kind of architecture interest that places like Yamashiro commands," says Prof. Tseng

She continues, "Academics tend to focus on expensive buildings owned by rich, often white people, because those are properties for which documentation exists,.... Without that scholarship, it's to make historical arguments for ethnic neighborhoods to be preserved."  Specifically,

There are places that are not well studied because they started out as cheap property and they tend to get forgotten.

Therefore, "How should we feel about the fact that a beloved facsimile of Japanese cultures sits protected on a mountain top overlooking Hollywood while Japanese American people elsewhere in the city struggle to preserve their culture, identity and neighborhoods?"  It depends on who you are and the experiences that shaped your life.  That is Los Angeles, a city with checkered histories and cultural curiosities everywhere you go.  Go figure.

Minh-Ha Pham, media studies profess at the Pratt Institute wrote, "Calling something cultural appropriation, and the repetitive, polarizing debate that label always sparks, often obscures important history,...."

Prof. Pham told Frank Shyong, "When we argue about cultural appropriation, we don't learn anything about history,.... And the history of how we have reproduced, adapted and integrated other cultures in this country is far more complex and interesting than that debate allows for."  More like an complicated and interesting history.

Thus, being offended by whether or not long grain rice or Sriracha is appropriate for sushi misses the point.  The real argument is "which stories to tell about our cultures, and whose perspective should be included."  The question we need to ask ourselves is "whether we know the full story."  In Yamashiro's case it is absolutely important to spend the time learning the details.

Blogger Candidate Forum: California Voting

Hello Everyone:

It is a lovely early spring Wednesday afternoon which means time for the weekly edition of Blogger Candidate Forum.  Today The Forum wants to explore a developing situation in the 2018 Midterm Elections, could California flip the United States House of Representatives?  California, that predictably bluest of the blue states has found itself in the position of possibly swinging the majority in The House from Republican to Democrat.  As things stand at the moment, the Democrats need 24 seats to reclaim control (latimes.com; Dec. 31, 2017; date accessed Apr. 4, 2018).  What this means for the hopes of a #bluetsunami in November is that the path to that magic number runs through Blogger's home state and that Democratic candidates really need to win a handful of Republican districts if they hope to make the House blue again.  (latimes.com; Mar. 26, 2018; date accessed Apr. 4, 2018).  Who is running and what are their chances?  Shall we take a look?

As of right now, the Democratic push to retake control of the House rests on the results of a handful of races, 24 to be precise. The current make up of the House is 193 seats controlled by the Democrats to the Republicans 238, with four vacancies (pressgallery.house.gov Mar. 16, 2018; Apr. 4, 2018).  Winning those races would give the Democrats a hairline thin majority of one: 218-217.  How does California figure into this?

Taking a look at the California congressional races, Democrats would have to flip a number of districts in order to take over the House.  Cook's Political Report has broken down the House race into three general categories: "Solid Seats, Likely/Lean Seats," and "Toss-Up or Worse Seats" (cookspolitical.com Apr. 2, 2018; Apr. 4, 2018).  Likely means the seats are not considered competitive, at the moment, but have the potential to come into play.  Lean indicates the races are competitive but one party as the advantage.  Toss-Up signifies the race is anyone's guess (Ibid).  The categories are further broken down according to party.  Let us focus on the California races.

In the "Lean Democratic" subheading there are two seats open: CA-39 held by Representative Ed Royce (R-Fullerton) and CA-49 held by Representative Darrell Issa (R-Vista).  Both gentlemen announced their retirements from Congress which means their seats are open.  Cook's rates the Rep. Royce's seat as even, it could go red or blue.  In the race to fill Rep. Issa's seat, Cook's gives the Republicans a one point edge (Ibid).  Both of these ratings are a clear indication of the changing political landscapes of their districts.

Twenty-one Republicans fall into the "Toss-Up" categories; three of which are from California.  The first race in the this category is CA-10 held by Representative Jeff Denham (R-Turlock). His race is rated as even as is the contest in CA-25 held by Representative Steve Knight (R-Palmdale) (Ibid).  The race to pay attention to is the contest in CA-48 to unseat Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-Costa Mesa).  although Cook's gives him a four point advantage (Ibid), Rep. Rohrbacher is a confirmed supporter of The President; leading Blogger believes that this race will be more competitive than Cook's predicts. 

Three California Republicans fall into the "Likely/Lean" categories: Representatives Mimi Walters (R-Laguna Nigel) CA-45, Tom McClintock (R-El Grove) CA-4, and David Valadao (R-Hanford) CA-21.  Cook's gives Rep. Walters a three point advantage but remains competitive.  Rep. McClintock's re-election campaign, so far, looks certain; Cook's gives him a ten point advantage.  However, things do not look so good from Rep. Valado.  Cook's gives the Democrats a five point advantage. (Ibid)

Rep. Valadao's race is particularly noteworthy because the 21st Congressional district went to former Secretary Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.  Rep. Valadao is being challenged by Emilio Huerta, the son of United Farmworkers legend Delores Huerta, in a rematch of their 2016 duel.  This should give Mr. Huerta an advantage in a district the trends Democrat (latimes.com; May 31, 2017; Apr. 4, 2018) and is over 70 percent Latino (Ibid).  Interestingly, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has been somewhat hesitant to engage in this race because the powers that be in Washington felt strong-armed (Ibid; Feb. 20, 2018) into supporting Mr. Huerta by his influential mother. Ms. Huerta has denied any talk of other candidates challenging her son (Ibid).

The California Democratic primary is the first Tuesday in June and if you have not registered to vote, do it now.  Be that as it may, Mr. Huerta has emerged as the sole unchallenged candidate (Ibid Jan. 30, 2018) in contrast to the half a dozen candidates looking to unseat Rep. Valadao.  Delores Huerta's endorsement is absolutely crucial for any Latino Democrat with hopes of winning in California's Central Valley.  The race in the 21st district has not attracted any sort of national media attention or out-of-state donor, yet but could be the one race that decides if the House stays red or turns blue.

If the Democrats fail to flip this seat and fall one vote short of a majority, many in the DCCC will surely cast blame on Ms. Huerta and "maternal instincts for meddling in a race might have been won with a different candidate on the ballot" (cnbc.com; Feb. 28, 2018; Apr. 4, 2018). However, the real blame will be shouldered by he DCCC for "failing to embrace Huerta, and giving him the resource he needed to win a very winnable seat." 

Time For A More Intersectional Approach To Planning

http://www.citylab.com; Mar. 24, 2018

Hello Everyone:

What is "real urban planning?"  This is the question that Deland Chan ponders in her CityLab article "What Counts as 'Real' City Planning?"  City planning sounds like something heroic, something very masculine and there is good reason for it.  Ms. Chan write, "In Cities of Tomorrow, textbook commonly use to teach the history of urban planning, Peter Hall espoused the contributions of Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier, and other heroic male figures of urbanism."  What about the women?  He told readers, There were, alas almost no founding mothers.  That statement could not be further from the truth.

The truth is that there has always been a female presence in city planning but, their contributions have evaporated in the mists of planning and architectural history.

Perhaps it is time to correct the situation.  Ms. Chan writes, "In light of recent discussion about the marginalization of women's in technology, the media, and other fields, it's time to bring attention to women in urbanism."  Thus far, the discussion has been centered on two points: "First, that there is a lack of representation and recognition (nextcity.org; Dec. 19, 2017; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018) for women's contributions to the field; and second, that male architects and planners fail to design cities (motherboard.vice.com; May, 15, 2017; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018) that account for diverse needs, including those of women."

Ms. Chan adds one more point, "we must expand the definition of what counts as 'real' planning."

As students, most planners learn that Daniel Burnham was the founding father of their profession.  However what is left out of the lecture is the role of women's clubs in leading "the charge for urban beautification at the turn of the 20th century, transforming the American urban landscape."  In Alison Isenberg's book Downtown America (press.uchicago.edu; date access Apr. 3, 2018), Ms. Isenberg looks at the role women played in driving urban changing through fundraising activities, organizing, presenting lectures, and getting the public's attention on improving the urban environment.

In the early 20th-century, city planning was still a relatively new discipline.  Quoting Ms. Isenberg, Ms. Chan tells us that the women's clubs legitimated [male] experts during the insecure early years of the planning profession, "helping them win lucrative bids and stimulating demand for their consulting services."  Unfortunately, once the profession was established male planners found it personally advantageous to obliterate the role of women's civic clubs from the official records and put distance between themselves gendered discussions of city planning.  Charles Mulford Robinson's General Plan for the Improvement of Colorado Springs (1912), for example, failed to give credit to the women's clubs, regardless of the fact that their efforts resulted in his employment.  Go figure.

Essentially, the ladies of the women's civic club were the "mothers of the fathers or urbanism--who then proceeded to erase them from the dominant narrative of American planning history."

The history of architecture is populated with countless women who worked side-by-side along their more bold faced male employers, but they were often considered women behind the men, assumed to play more modest function.  Here are just a few women who deserve more recognition. 

Marion Mahony Griffin (curbed.com; June. 8, 2017; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018), is best known for her stunning watercolor renderings for her boss Frank Lloyd Wright but did you know that she was one of the first women to receive an architectecture license?  Do you know who Charlotte Perriand (apartmenttherapy.com; Oct. 15, 2009; date accessed Apr. 3. 2018) was?  You definitely know the architect she worked for, Le Corbusier.  She designed some of the architect's most iconic chairs.  Lily Reich (bauhaus100.de; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018) collaborated with Ludwig Mies Van Rohe and Anne Tyng (nytimes.com; Jan. 7, 2012 date accessed Apr. 3, 2018) who worked with Louis Kahn--"...exerting a strong influence on those men's designs."

The problem is that the work of female designers are often not directly attributed or celebrated.  They either relegated to the sides or absent from the "Urbanism Hall of Fame."

It is ironic that a profession that professes to serve the public as a core value fails to acknowledge its women contributors.  Deland Chan writes, "This means acknowledging the contributions of all who are were instrumental in advancing the field, whether it is design, architecture, or planning."  Not only does this enhance the "Hall of Fame," "it is an opportunity to create a more accurate and inclusive professional identity."

"Who designs our cities, and for whom?"

Critics have observed that cities have not been designed with attention to the way in which women use (cms.mildredwarner.org; 2013 date accessed Apr. 3, 2018) transportation, public spaces, and streets. If planners designed cities to consider a broader range of needs, they would work better for everyone (huffingtonpost.com; Apr. 26, 2016; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018).

Part of the lack of inclusivity in professions that create cities is that women are in the minority.  Strangely, in the United States, women compose the majority of architecture (ncarb.org; 2017; Apr. 3, 2018) and urban planning (planningaccreditationboard.org; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018) schools but things are quite different  in the working world.  Ms. Chan explains, "As of 2014, only 22 percent of licensed architects and 17 percent of partners or principals in architecture firms were women."

Increasing these percentages could help, "but the professions might still end up prioritizing a narrow segment of the population."  After all, the spectrum of gender identities does not square with the traditonal male-female dichotomy anymore.  Intersectional determinants--race, ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic backgrounds, and age--all affect the way women relate to place and space.

According to Ms.Chan, "The real problem is when people in the field lack the framework or tools to approach inclusive design for cities.  Clare Cooper-Marcus and Carolyn Francis wrote in their 1997 book People Places,

Most of the design literature we have reviewed--if it refers to users at all--assumes that they are all able-bodied, relatively young, and male.

Twenty-one years later, we are still having a conversation about this problem (architecture.yale.edu; "Noncompliant Bodies: Social Equity and Public Space;" April 6, 2018; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018).

There have been ample missed opportunities and life-threatening results when designers fail to take into account inclusivity, they can (and do [amazon.com; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018]) fill a book.  One example are the car companies who used to test airbags using dummies with the average height and weight of a typical American male.  It was not until 2003 that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began testing airbags (washingtonpost.com; Mar. 25, 2012; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018) with the average proportions of an American female.

In terms of the built environment, "many solutions are simply not designed for a wider range of needs." Just try pushing a collapsible shopping cart along a wet narrow sidewalk or navigating a badly laid out intersection with a stroller.  

Deland Chan says, "Increasing the recognition and representation of women and other underrepresented groups design and planning, and expanding our conception of who uses urban space, are important."  Additionally, "We can break down the increasingly limited box of what even counts as planning."

"Expanding the definition of planning"

The current planning canon continues to reinforce the binary concept of what real "planning" constitutes.

According to this black and white reading (citylab.com; Nov. 16, 2011; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018), "'real' planning is either big in scope, or focused on 'hard' infrastructure implements, or based on highly technical expertise--or some combination of those three qualities."   Daniel Burnham famously said "Make no small plans," and Jane Jacobs' sparring partner Robert Moses is grudgingly considered a "power broker."  However, ground-up planning and "soft" human-oriented work like community outreach, are not given the same weight.

Therefore, if we enlarged our definition of planning, we might include Majora Carter's (ted.com; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018) employment development and environmental justice work in the South Bronx, or the work of Antoinette Carroll's (fastdesign.com Feb. 16, 2017; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018) Creative Reaction Lab, which focuses on inequity in St. Louis, Missouri.  Both women are not "real" planners in the sense that they are professional trained and certified planners, but they help shape their cities and brought attention to "place-based work already happening in low-income communities of color."  Therefore, instead of expecting their place-based work to fit neatly into the planning paradigm, city planning should expand itself to include "the critical intersections they explore between planning and public health, environmental justice, and education."

Without expanding what counts as planning, we shut out ways of making sense of our cities that would help find new approaches.  One example, "community development groups can help planners think about achieving sustainability through cultural preservation, which is already happening in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles (huffpost.com; June 7, 2014; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018) and San Francisco's (fastcompany.com; Mar. 31, 2016) Chinatown (sustainablechinatown.org; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018)."  A lot of local expertise is lost if non-professionals are consulted when their approval is needed.  What if they were engaged in defining the goal and priorities from the start?

What role do professors and the planning school curriculum play in addressing these disparities (stanforddaily.com; Mar. 20, 2018; date accessed Apr. 3, 2018)

From the outset, colleges and universities that educate future planners should rethink what they teach. Ms. Chan proclaims, "It is time to recognize that our shared identity as planners is based on privileging the contributions of certain individuals and groups over others.  In specific terms, institutions can reshape curricula to include missing or marginalized voices."  This can incorporate professionals from non-traditional planning fields as co-teachers and co-researchers who can offer innovative strategies for studying the urban environment.

At the end of the day, "we will have to challenge our own deeply held assumptions about 'real' planning."  This is the only way we can pave the way for the future leadership of the profession who will be prepared to address the needs in cities of the present and future.

 

Re-Examining The Spanish Colonial Revival

http://www.latimes.com; March 30, 2018

Hello Everyone:

Welcome to a fresh full week on The Blog.  Yours Truly is back and ready to write.  Human Typist is ready to go as well.  The weekend was rather blissful, POTUS tweets, Ted Nugent and Laura Ingram rants aside.  Shall we start?

If you have or had the occasion to travel around Southern California, you notice that the predominant style of architecture, especially residential architecture, is something called Spanish Colonial--really, Colonial Californiano.  Carolina A. Miranda explains what Colonial Californiano is in her Los Angeles Times article "Why so many Mexicans revile the Colonial Californiano architectural hybrid that spread from SoCal," "It is Mexico as filtered by California and then re-appropriated by Mexico in a different guise."

The story of how this particular architectural style came into being is a tale of idea bouncing back and forth between two cultures in the most impossible ways.  It is a story that has left its indelible mark on Mexico City, to this very day, manifesting in apartment buildings and mansion--"neocolonial structures whose immediate design antecedents lie not in Mexico, but, ironically in the United States."

Wendy Kaplan, the head of the decorative arts and design department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, elaborates,

This was a style for the newly rich, aspirational Mexicans who wanted some kind of national expression,... But who also. wanted to show how up-to-date they were.

However, although the Colonial Californiano was wildly popular in its period of signicance in the early 20th century, it was nearly "universally reviled by Mexican scholars and avant-grade architects."  Why was it so detested in Mexico?

Mexico's National Autonomous University architecture professor Cristina Lopez Uribe explains,

They hated it because people thought it was Mexican,... But it was really a copy of the Spanish Revival--which hailed from the United States.

Specifically, California.  Allow Blogger to provide context.

Europeans first set foot in California in the 1530s when Hernando Cortes's men ventured into Baja, California.  It was not until 1542, when the Spanish sailed north to Alta California (present day California) and Juan Rodrigues Cabrillo made landfall farther north, in modern day Santa Barbara.  Over two hundred years elapsed before Spain made a real effort to colonize the coastal region Juan Cabrillo claimed for the monarchy.  The coastal winds and currents made the northern passage even more arduous and Spanish sailors failed to find a safe place to dock their ships.  Thus, Baja, California became the northwest boundary of Sapnish colonization. Nevertheless, efforts to colonize and convert the indigenous population to Christianity was half-hearted, at best.  It was not until the Seven Years War (1756-63) reconfigured European alliance and their imperial ambitions, did Spain seriously attempt to exert control over Alta Calfiornia.  (www.loc.gov; date accessed Apr. 2, 2018)  

This next part is crucial to our post.  The Spanish asserted themselves through a combination of presidios (military forts) and mission churches administered by the Franciscan monks, under the leadership of Junipero Serra.  In 1769, the first group of explorers set out from Baja, and a network of coastal settlements were established by soldiers (at the presidios) and the priests (missions).  By the end of the 18th-century, there were presidios in Monterey, San Francisco, and Santa Barbara and twenty-one missions stretching from San Diego to San Rafael in present day Marin County.  Although small towns (pueblos) sprang up around the missions and presidios, in 1777 an independent civil pueblo was established in San Jose, with other to follow.  The pueblos were governed by an alcalde (part-mayor, part-judge) in conjunction with a council--the ayuntamiento. (Ibid)

What makes it so detested in Mexico?  The answer lies in the Spanish colonization of Mexico (1531-1821).  The Conquista--the destruction of the Aztec Empire--was carried out without official recognition.  With little preparation, Spain found itself ruling over a far away land, more populated and larger than it.  The question was how would it control and convert a land that took many months, by ship?  The Spanish began by renaming the Aztec capital, Tenochititlan, Mexico City, redesignated as the capital of Nueva Espana (New Spain).  Hernando Cortes granted his soldiers encomiendas (land grants) which were extended to entire towns and their Native Mexican population.  The Native Mexicans were presessedinto forced labor, disguised as slavery.  The grant holders were also supposed to convert the indigenous population and look after their welfare.  Of course, that was not the case, the grant holders were more like absentee landlords (mexicanhistory.org; date Apr. 2, 2018).  In the 19th-century when rebellion, overthrew the royalists, under the leadership of Father Miguel Hidalgo, the person considered the "Father of Mexican Independence" (fsmitha.org; date accessed Apr. 2, 2018).

The emergence of Colonial Californiano is a footnote in the recently closed comprehensive exhibition "Found in Translation: Design in California and Mexico, 1915-85 (lacma.org; date accessed Apr. 2, 2018), yet it is a fascinating one.  Wendy Kaplan, the co-curator of the exhibition told the L.A. Times, It is a very complicated and fascinating story.  It is a story that begins at the turn 20th-century.

California was admitted into the United States in 1851.  The state had a reputation as this untamed place at the western edge of the continent.  It was also a place where a person could reinvent themselves.  At the start of the 20th-century, the state was in search of an architectural identity, and taking a cue from the national romantic movement of the early 19th-century, looked to its Mexican past, "fusing elements of colonial design into early Modern structures: white stucco, red-tile roofs, arched openings and iron-grille window.  It is the colonial stripped down and made breezy, redefined for an era of mass media and the automobile."

Thus, the Spanish Colonial Revival sprang to life.  It was described by one American architect of the twenties as a true California type.

Private residents, public spaces--El Paseo promenade/mall in Santa Barbara as an example and government buildings: the Beverly Hills water treatment plant (1928) by Arthur Taylor, later the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study (laconservancy.org; date accessed Apr. 2, 2018)--sprang forth in variations on the theme.

The point was a structural embodiment of the fairy tale land perfumed with orange blossoms and eternal sunshine.  This fantasy spread beyond California's borders via architects who spent time in Los Angeles and traveled elsewhere and glossy periodicals featuring the homes of movie stars.  "Howard Hughes (la.curbed.com; July 10, 2017; date accessed Apr. 2, 2018), Charlie Chaplin and Delores del Rio all, at one point or another, had pads designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style by architects such as Wallace Neff, who helped popularize the style."

Eventually, it made the leap elsewhere, in particular, early 20th-century Mexico, where it was re-named Colonial Californiano by architects and developers looking sell designs that were both fashionable and traditional.

In the affluent Mexico City Polanco district, architect Francisco J. Serrano, who frequently traveled to Los Angeles to buy movies for the cinema he owned, designed the undulating Pasaje Polanco, "a mixed-used apartment complex completed in 1939."  The Modern designed ticked off all the design boxes of the Colonial Californiano.

Just a few blocks to the south, on the corner of Luis Urbina and Alejandro Dumas streets, is the home of lottery tycoon Elias Henaine (grandecasasdemexico.blogspot.com; Mar. 16, 2017; date accessed Apr. 2, 2018), designed by Eduardo Fuhrken.  Carolina Miranda notes, "Interestingly, many Colonial Californiano homes were built and occupied by immigrants--serving as visual badges of Mexican-ness.  Henaine, for example, was of Lebanese origin."

On a recent visit to Mexico City, Ms. Miranda was taken on a walking tour of the Polanco by Cristina Lopez Uribe who pointed out some of the extant examples--including the spectacular Colonial Californiano home that has been re-purposed as the Mexican branch of Japanese fusion restaurant Nobu.

Ms. Lopez, who contributed an essay on "the synergies between the architecture of Mexico and California" for the notable Found in Translation catalog (prestelpublishing.randomhouse.de; date accessed Apr. 2, 2018) explains why this style is detested by so many Mexican Modernist.

In the early 20th-century, Mexican design was also in the process of revisiting historical period styles--for the purpose of creating a national identity following the Mexican Revolution.  The Spanish Colonial Revival, took extensive liberties with these historic design elements.

The foundation of Mexican colonial tradition is "a building typically surrounded an outdoor patio; in Spanish Colonial Revival, buildings were often sited at the center of the property and surrounded by garden.  Spanish Colonial Revival design were frequently asymmetrical and incorporated elements like a tower (torreon), basements and pitched red-tile roofs-design components that were not part of the Mexican colony.

Of course the name, Spanish Colonial Revival, was problematic, which took its ancestors from Europe, not Mexico.

Ms. Lopez noted,

The 'Mexican' had a primitive connotation--we were the aggressors of the Mexican Revolution,... So when they establish their style in the United States, it was best to establish a connection with European rather than the Mexican.

Re-branding it as the Spanish Colonial Revival effectively erased the Mexican influence from Californian architecture.

To wit, "When Santa Barbara's El Paseo debuted in the 1920s, for example, it was described as A Bit of Andalusia the the Santa Barbara Daily News."  Completely oblivious to the fact that architect James Osborne Craig specifically referenced a structure in Cuernavaca, Mexico.

F.O.B. (Friend of Blog) former L.A. Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne called it "...a common ploy" in his review of "Found in Translation (latimes.com; Feb. 15, 2018; date accessed Apr. 2, 2018).  He wrote,

When Myron Hunt and George Washington Smith produced their most ambitious Spanish Colonial designs between 1900 and 1930, they weren't just gazing back to Southern California's Spanish and Mexican pasts; they were pointedly giving a foothold to a respectable Eurocentricisms here,... It was commonplace to 'misidentifying Mexican artifacts as Spanish... precisely because of this preference for a European lineage over a pan-American one.

Mexican Modernist Luis Barragan observed the ridiculousness of the matter at a California architectural event in 1951.  He told the assembly,

In Mexico we have had the misfortune of the influence of California Colonial...the use of which in our country is so absurd, since this style was to Mexico, and from Mexico to California,...Los Angeles and Hollywood then exported it once again to Mexico as California's Spanish Colonial.

Thom Anderson's 2003 documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself is a critique of the Spanish Colonial Revival, calling it loaded with "phony historicism."

LACMA's Wendy Kaplan told the L.A. Times,

Found in Translation casts a light on how much Mexican design and architecture have been left out of the history of California design and, of course, design throughout the United States.

The exhibition also revealed the strange ways in which California inspired the architecture of place like Mexico City.  Cristina Lopez Uribe picks up the conversation thread,

When these were built, architecture was in its Modernist phase and many architects despised this style,... It was usually done by engineers and developers...it was the style done in tourist neighborhoods.

Time has passed and the kitschy of the past has evolved into a something with a story to tell about the way ideas travel and take shape.  Ms. Lopez adds, They deserve to be studied

Even "phony historicism" can tell us about ourselves as much as the real history.

 

Blogger Candidate Forum: Red, Purple, And Blue

http://www.citylab.com; March 22, 2018

Hello Everyone:

Today we have a Tuesday edition of Blogger Candidate Forum.  Human Typist has an appointment tomorrow and will not be available to do Blogger's work.  

Red, purple, and blue?  Is the American flag changing colors?  Relax, not happening in the near or distant future.  Really, Jed Kolko looks at what happens when populations in blue counties move to red counties.  Specifically, he looks at how this trend affects the latest census data in his CityLab article "Red Counties + Blue Folks =  Purple?  Reading the New Census Data?"  The 2017 Census (census.gov; date accessed Mar. 27, 2018) for local population, recently released, "show that Americans are moving from blue counties to red counties, and at a quickening pace."  This demographic trend has steadily accelerated since 2012, and the biggest increase is in the deep counties-where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton handily bested Republican nominee Donald Trump by at least 20 percent.  Mr. Kolko writes, "Blue and red refer to whether Clinton or Trump got more votes in 2016; dark and light refer to whether the margin at least 20 percentage point.  Data on voting as not available counties, which were omitted."

What is powering this trend?  The ongoing suburbanization (fivethirtyeight.com; Mar. 23, 2017; date access Mar. 27, 2018) of the United States (citylab.com; Feb. 28, 2015; date accessed Mar. 27, 2018) underscores this move red counties.  Mr. Kolko sounds an optimistic note for blue counties, "But the news isn't all grim for blue America.  Blue counties got a population boost from international migration, partly offsetting losses from domestic migration."  Further, the fastest growing red counties are tilting left and could flip in the coming midterm election.

Jed Kolko reports, "The Census breaks population growth into three components: net domestic migration, international migration, and natural increase (births and death)."  We begin with domestic migration "which accounts for most of the difference the Census shows in population growth."  In 2017 (specifically the Census year ending July 1, 2017), dark blue counties experienced a minuscule 0.7 drop in population, the result of domestic migration--"in other words, more people moved out of these counties to the rest of American than moved in."  The light blue counties only experienced a slight drop, while the red counties saw more people moving in than moving out.  "The flow of people blue to red counties has picked up in recent years, steadily increasing since 2012."  You can see a chart on "Net domestic migration by county, by 2016 vote" at citylab.com; Mar. 22, 2018.

However, international and natural increase migration balance out some of the domestic movement from blue to red counties.  Mr. Kolko reports, "International migration contributed six times as much population growth in dark-blue counties as dark-red counties."  In other words, "80 percent of net international migration in 2017 was in blue counties, and 56 percent in dark-blue counties."  Further, natural--i.e. birth minus deaths--also skewed in favor of the blue counties, the reason being red counties tend to be older, thus higher mortality rates.  Mr. Kolko writes, "The contribution of birth to population growth is similar in red and blue counties, on average, and there are both red and blue places where birth rates are high."  Demographic growth due to higher birth rates are evident in counties with higher Latino (theglobalist.com; Feb. 14, 2017; date accessed Mar. 27, 2018) or Mormon (paw research.org; May 22, 2015; date accessed Mar. 27, 2018) populations.  Among large metropolitans, no big surprise, demographic growth is greater in dark blue El Paso and McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, Texas and dark red Provo-Orem and Ogdan-Clearfield, Utah.  See the chart "Components of population change,by 2016 vote" at citylab.com; Mar. 22, 2018

If we combine all avenues of population changes--domestic, international, and natural increase migration--we see that dark blue counties experienced slower growth than other counties, and grew more slowly than previous year.  See "County population growth, by 2016 vote" chart at citylab.com; Mar. 22, 2018.  

Jed Kolko points out, "The differences between red and blue counties counties echo the broader trend toward the continued suburbanization of America."  In essence, "Urban counties of large metros are now growing slowly; they also tend to be dark blue [jedkolko.com; date accessed Mar. 27, 2018].  The fastest-growth counties are the lower-density suburbs of large metros, which lean red [Ibid]."  The exception being non-metropolitan areas, which lean heavily red, have a experienced demographic stagnation or shrinkage.  Therefore, "while red America includes booming suburbs its also includes struggling rural areas."  See "Population change, by place type" chart at citylab.com; Mar. 22, 2018.

What does this mean for Democrats and Republicans?  Will the Repbulicans reap the benefits and Democrats be left crying in their blue beer?  Not exactly.  While red counties may boast being magnets for people, it is possible that "the blue-to-red migrants adopt some of the political view of their new neighbors."  However, it is also possible that blue-to-red migrants could bring their politics with them.  Check out the 2016 essay titled "Go Midwest Young Hipster" (nytimes.com; Oct. 22, 2016; date access Mar. 27, 2018) went as far as to suggest "migration as a political strategy to help Democrats win outside their traditional strongholds."  Possible.  However, we are seeing Democrats scoring victories, at the state- and federal-level, in traditionally Republican districts. Think Conor Lamb's recent razor thin victory in Pennsylvania and Democratic wins in Virginia and New Jersey.

Nevertheless, the latest Census population data gives an incomplete picture of voting trends.  The current information does not tell us the demographics, politics, or anything else about the individuals Who migrate from blue to red counties.  However, one hint might be in how the nature of politics in fast-growing places are shifting.  Mr. Kolko writes, "Among red counties there's a huge difference between places that are swinging right and those moving toward."  Among the red counties there is a big difference between places that tilt right and those gravitating toward the center.  In counties that Mr. Trump won in 2016, "but voted at least 10 percent for Romney in 2012,--" i.e., those that drifted toward the center in in 2016--"population grew at 2.5 percent in 2017, more than three times the national growth rate of 0.7 percent."  These places includes Sunbelt counties in metropolitans such as Atlanta and Dallas, as well as a number of counties in Utah.  However, counties that flipped from President Obama in 2012 to Mr. Trump in 2016--"including many counties in New York State, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan--grew on average just 0.2 percent in 2017."

What can we conclude about these migratory trends?  The midterm electoral map will reflect a shifting population blue to red and red counties drifting left.  This may be good news for the Democrats but they should not just rely on this latest Census data.  Get out and knock on every door.

Out Of The Ashes Comes An Opportunity

http://www.citylab.com; March 20, 2018

Hello Everyone:

Welcome to an abbreviated week on The Blog.  Human Typist has an appointment on Wednesday so The Blogger Candidate Forum will appear on Tuesday, instead of its regularly scheduled Wednesday appearance.

Bravo to Emma Gonzales, David Hogg, Sam Ziff, Cameron Kasky, and the student organizers of the #MarchForOurLives the past Saturday, March 24. You are strong and brave.  You have an ally at historicpca.blogspot.com.  Blogger understands that there are those of you who disagree with the goals of The March.  That is okay, you are entitled to respectfully state your opinion.  Instead of engaging these articulate students in meaningful coversation, you demean them.  You created scurrilous memes, name calling, dismissing it as a product of "liberal Hollywood billionaires," puppets of the Democratic National Committee, and so forth.  Keep this in mind, some of them are old enough, or will be, to vote in November.  They will remember what side of the gun control issue you are on, as will their allies.  Blogger would like to remind you to follow these courageous young people and register to vote.   On to today's subject.

Natural and man-made disasters are devasting for communities but once they pass, something beautiful can grow out of the destruction.  This is what happened in Clarkesville, Georgia.  It is located in the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains, about 85 miles north of Atlanta.  In March 2014, fire tore through the city's downtown square (nowhabersham.com; Apri. 6 2017; Mar. 26, 2018), destroying a quarter of the square.    Clarkesville city manager  Barbara Kesler spoke with Adina  Solomon in Ms. Solomon's CityLab article "In a Historic Downtown, Disaster Becomes a Chance to Build Something Better," that one of the best days of her life came three years after the fire.  Ms. Kesler recalled,

The day that we did the ribbon-cutting and opening the spaces, it was overwhelmingly emotional and very positive for the community,.... It was something we had worked so hard for.

It was a ribbon-cutting that nearly did not take place.

Clarkesville's economic development director Mary Beth Horton remembered,

This is like the worst nightmare for someone who's in downtown development.  You come home for work one day and everything's fine.  You wake up the next morning and half your downtown is gone and they you've got to somehow figure out how it's all going to come together.

This is a familiar lament for many cities, that have been affect by hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, and other disasters.  Ms. Solomon cites the example of Bothell, Washington, near Seattle.  She writes, "A fire in the historic downtown of Bothell, Washington,...., destroyed at least 15 businesses [komonews.com; date accessed Mar. 26, 2018] in July 2016."  Ellicott City, Maryland experienced a catastrophic  flood that wrecked (inquisitr.com; July 31, 2016; date accessed Mar. 26, 2018) most of the historic downtown, collapsing portions of Main Street.  In February, a block in downtown Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, home to a number of businesses, went up in flames (wearegreenbay.com; July 1, 2014; date accessed Mar. 26. 2018).

Adina Solomon points out, "But with the right steps, cities can rebuild after disaster.  To understand how, just start with Clarkesville."

Following the Clarkesville fire, "about 30 employees from the businesses that burned down had nowhere to work."  Ms. Kesler said, "the Georgia Department of Labor drove a bus to town two days after the fire, and for several days, the bus was open to help place people at other businesses."  Within a week, nearly all of the former employees had new jobs.

The next step in the recovery process was fixing the downtown.  The businesses owners of the damaged buildings could not afford rebuilding process.  Further, six months after the fire, no one stepped forward to take on the task.  Ms. Solomon reports, "...Clarkesville bought four properties for $400,000, plus one property it received through donation."  Ms. Horton said "this was necessary to salvage downtown."

Mary Beth Horton continues,

Of course, you're always met with, 'Oh well, this is government taking over property, and all this kind of stuff, and yes, it is,.... But at the same time, we have an allegiance to our town and we can't let half of our town just sit there burnt down without stepping in and doing something, so we just had to get very proactive very quickly.

Clarkesville Mayor Barrie Aycock added,

That was the only way that it could be built in a way that would be an asset to the town.

The rebuilding effort was more than just repairing and replacing the damaged structures.  "Clarkesville decided to restore the 120-year-old buildings, but also to pair the work with an expansive master plan for the downtown area."  The city turned to the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government for guidance.

In order to know which projects to focus its efforts, civic officials asked for input from residents, business owners, and visitors.  Ms. Horton organized focus groups and mailed out surveys, with over half of Clarkesville's 1,733 residency responded.  She credits much of the success of the restoration to public involvement.

Adina Solomon writes, "The consensus was to preserve the historic building, and ground broke on the square in April 2016.  In a row of three building on the square, middle one had burned down, and when Clarkesville added a firewall to make the remaining buildings structurally sound, there wasn't enough space for a third building.  So they made it into an open-air-plaza that connects square to nearby Washington Street."

The rebuilding project, including the purchase of the buildings, cost $3 million.  "Without grants--which funded 40 percent [news.uga.edu; Dec. 11, 2017; date accessed Mar. 26, 2018] of that--and the city's planning efforts, Clarkesville's rebuild wouldn't have happened."

The ribbon-cutting Barbara Kesler had been waiting for, finally came a year later.  She told Ms. Solomon,

The city made the commitment not to let downtown die,... Because it would've died if we would've left it there.

Clarkesville resident Deb Kilgore now makes her home in an apartment built over a previously damaged buildings, a project suggested by public feedback.  It is a single two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit over a street-level retail business in one of the rebuilt structures.  Ms. Kilgore told Ms. Solomon, The community came together to support the city's endeavors.

The rebuilding process inspired smaller projects: "removing outdated parking signs; improving streetscapes with sidewalks, lighting, and planters; and painting a scenic view of Clarkesville on a plain-looking building, enhancing the entrance to downtown."

The restoration of Clarkesville's downtown offers other cities, facing similar situations, a few good lessons.

First, public involvement is crucial.  Not only were the adult residents part of the process, Clarkesville also established a Main Street committee composed of high school students.

Danny Bivens, a senior public service associate at the Vinson Institute who worked with Clarkesville, told CityLab,

When these buildings were built back, people could look at it and shake their in approval because it was their ideas,.... If you talk to people, they know what the issues are in the community.  They have the solutions.

Another lesson comes from "Lean Urbanism--accomplishing quicker, less expensive projects while also working on the projects while also working on the projects that take considerable time and money."

Mr. Bivens continued,

If you're not in local government and you go and you give your input, you talk about changes that you want to see, and then you don't hear anything back for seven years, that can be disconcerting.... It's really important for us to have some short-term success that people can see, that their energy and their input is being used.

Ms. Kesler suggests "not to rush projects, but to make clear commitments on time and budget."

Mary Beth Horton said, "a rebuild requires constant communication with the public."  Clarkesville made public how long each project would take as they happened and posted renderings on how they would look when completed.  The steady stream of communications reassured residents like Ms. Kilgore.  She said,

 It was important for people to know that the city was serous about rebuilding and being able to see what was going on.

The cliche "chaos and opportunity are two sides of the same coin" applies in post-disaster situations.  Rebuilding after a category five hurricane, for example, can lead to action.  After the fire in Bothell, the city was able to secure long-sought funds to redevelop its Main Street.  In addition to rebuilding its downtown after the fire, Clarkesville created community events to bring more people downtown.

Mary Beth Horton said,

The fire was such a devastation to us, but there was such a silver lining in it, because had it not been for that, we probably would not have done all the different things that we've done for the entire downtown as a whole,.... All that sort of happened on the tail end of this fire, because we realized we just had the opportunity to do all of this, and we jumped on it.

Blogger Candidate Forum: Is There Such A Thing As A Good Electoral Map?

http://www.citylab.com

Hello Everyone:

Welcome to a rainy day edition of Blogger Candidate Forum.  The Human Typist decided that she had enough of dodging an early spring storm, currently soaking Southern California, and decided to seek shelter.  We cannot have Human Typist messing up her hair or neatly applied makeup, now can we?  Alright, enough about that, shall we move on to today's subject gerrymandering and commuter patterns?  

When we last took up the subject of gerrymandering, about two months ago, we looked at an upcoming Pennsylvania State Supreme Court case that would force the state to re-draw its congressional districts so that they were more evenly distributed between Democrats and Repbulicans.  We will be returning to this later in the post.  One thing is for sure, gerrymandering is bad; it unfairly tips the political scales in one direction or another. In addition to one-sided election results, a gerrymandered map is objectionable because the bizarrely draw districts do not correspond to any and all relevant geographical data.  You do not have to take Blogger's word for it, you just have to check out to Garret Dash Nelson's CityLab article "What Would a Good Electoral Map Even Look Like?"  Excellent question when you consider this statement from Mr. Nelson, "People have emotional and political attachments to all sorts of geographic entities: jurisdictions like states and cities as well as cultural regions like the Bay Area or Appalachia."  Seriously, do any of you think that Human Typist introduces herself as a proud resident of CA-33 (her congressional district) or has its boundaries tattooed on some part of her anatomy?  A No to both questions.

To quantify just how politically unfair gerrymandering is, "we can count up partisan demographics and look at election results."  However, the more difficult task would gauging how well or poorly the map matches up with the patterns of human geography. While many states mandate the districting process respect "so-called 'communities of interest,'" how they defined and delineated remains an open question, therefore these requirements rarely carry any legal weight.

However, there is a way to follow the geographic framework of a community by studying the networks that bind places together.  One network that is particularly crucial and fairly easy to measure and map is commuter patterns.  Mr. Nelson writes, "In the study of networks, a 'community' is defined as a group of objects that have relatively dense set of connections among each other, and a relatively weak set of connections beyond."  He does concede that this definition "is much thinner than our social and political concepts of 'community,' it does have the advantage of being measurable."

Using community structure of a network, as opposed to the assigned voting districts, offer the possibility of checking whether or not an electoral preserves "communities of interest."  Mr. Nelson argues that "a good map, seen from this perspective, would keep areas that are connected by commuter webs together in the same district as much as possible."  By contrast, "a bad map would slice up commuter regions, fracturing cities and confecting electoral districts out or places that have relatively less connection with one another."

How would a network scientist measure whether or not an electoral district preserves a "community of interest?"  These scholarly women and men developed a statistic called "modularity" which gauges how good (or bad) a proposed electoral district matches up with the established structure of connections within a given network.  Think of it "as a ratio between the number of communities which stay inside of the borders of a single district versus the number of commutes which cut across district lines."  Mr. Nelson humorously named this measure the "Elbridge score (Electoral Boundary Resemblance to Identifiable Geography)" after the 19th century Massachusetts governor and gerrymandering namesake Elbridge Gerry (blogs.loc.gov; Feb. 10, 2017; date accessed Mar. 21, 2018) .

Garret Dash Nelson's own methodology is fairly straightforward.  He used "data set of millions of commutes--the same one that my colleague Alasdair Rae and I used to redraw the map of the U.S. commuter 'megaregions'--to compare congressional maps."  What Mr. Nelso discovered was an enormous variation in context to how well congressional districts pair with commuter regions made up of interconnected urban, suburban, rural areas.  The five states that did well were: Kansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, and Tennssee.  Each has a fairly even population distribution at a distance from each other.  Mr. Nelson notes, "This makes some intuitive sense.  Because the population of a U.S. Congressional district is standardized at around 700,000 people, the easiest states to divide into fair districts will be the ones which are already roughly split up into commuter zones of roughly 700,000 each."

One example, which can be viewed at citylab.com is a map of Indiana's commuter patterns ("only the ones that both begin and end within the state") overlaid on the state's congressional districts.  Mr. Nelson points that each district "encloses a fairly self contained set of commutes, usually centered around ne of the state's major cities."  The commutes are illustrated in purple if they start and stop within the district's boundaries, orange if they cross districts.  The map does a good job of maintainin commutes within district boundaries.

You can compare these evenly divided mostly Midwestern states with the five worst states: Rhode Island, Hawai'i, New Hampshire, Idaho, and Nevada--all "characterized by heterogenous geography and difficult-to-contain urban clusters."  An example is all two of Rhode Island's congressional districts which slice through the capital city of Providence.  Downtown Boise, Idaho is located in the second district, but the majority of the city's populous western suburbs are situated in the first district.  In each instance, as the map of Rhode Island indicates, a huge portion of commuters live and work across district boundary lines.

This begs the question, "why aren't the state's that are most notoriously gerrymandered, like Pennsylvania and North Carolina at the bottom of the Elbridge scores?"  The reason is that each state is different--some are large, rectilinear, and evenly distributed and others have disparate population and urban development concentrations--that it is difficult to compare this score across state lines.  Therefore, Garret Dash Nelson proposes, "It's more useful, then, to test multiple proposed maps in one state against another.  By keeping the underlying geography of a state constant, we can see how well--or how poorly-- proposed maps fits a state's 'communities of interest' defined by commuter connections."

Returning to the State of Pennslyvania.  Comparing the Elbridge scores between the state's current gerrymandered map and the new map the state Supreme Court issued in February "suggests pretty convincingly that the current map cuts the state up into areas that don't match very well with commuter-based communities."  The gerrymandered version scored a mere 0.58; by contrast, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Map rated a 0.65, and another proposed fair map scored 0.66.

Another way to diagram the same measurement, instead of mapping it out, is creating a matrix of a state's electoral districts, an counting the commutes between each district in each of the cell.  Mr. Nelson writes, "In a perfect (and impossible) districting scheme, all of the commutes would lie along the diagonal of the matrix, since they would begin and end in the same district."  If you check out citylab.com, you can see the matrix that Mr. Nelson generated for Kansas and Nevada; two of the best and worst scorers.  He explains, "The number at each cell represents the percentage of the state's total number of commutes.  In Kansas, nearly everybody lives and works in the same congressional district.  In Neveada,..., a lot of people live in one district and work in another--a consequence of the fact that job-rich Las Vegas lies in its own NV-01, while the city's suburbs lie in NV-03 and NV-04."

Important thing to pay attention to, "there's a big conceptual leap between commuter connections and fully-constituted 'communities of interest.'"  Essentially, commuter networks do not record people who are not part of the workforce.  Further, they completely ignore some of the most significant ties that bind a community together such as: friendships, family networks, cultural ties, or ecology--then there the subjective unquantifiable elements that make places and political community more cohesive.

Attempting to pair electoral districts to the actual geography of "communities of interest" creates some complicated choices about the things we value.  For example, if you are interested in equatable housing or re-districting transit authority jurisdiction, tracing the geography of a commuter area is a logical decision.  However, if your goal is "to balance out partisanship at a federal level and make elections more competitive, then it doesn't necessarily follow that districts should follow functional geography."  Just the opposite may be true, given that Americans are increasingly concentrated in politically-likeminded geographies.

Garrett Dash Nelson uses this example: "which scenario would be preferable?  To vote in a geographically-coherent district together with lots of people with common interests, or in a district that doesn't make geographic sense but has an even mix of Deomcrats and Repbulicans?"  Think you know the right answer?  No, you do not because the answer really depends on other values like: "Are our representatives supposed to represent place-specific communities (in which case matching district boundaries to human geography is crucial) or do they just represent the interests of a national political party (in which case preserving local communities might be much less important)?"

These kinds of ideological and philosophical issues have been mostly passed over in the gerrymandering debate.  One thing is certain, we know what a bad electoral map looks like, but a good one is more difficult to figure out.