In 1976, the Supreme Court of the United States decided a case about the powers of local governments. American Mini Theaters, a small movie theater chain, opened two adult movie theaters showing pornographic films in the city of Detroit, Michigan. The town’s ordinances prohibited these theaters from opening due to their proximity to residential areas, and other buildings with specified regulated uses. American Mini Theaters felt this infringed on their 14th amendment right to due process, and their First Amendment right to free speech. After much back and forth between the lower courts, the Supreme Court made the ultimate decision: the City of Detroit was allowed to forbid American Mini Theaters from opening their adult theaters. This allowed for a wider understanding of police powers and the dynamics therein for American cities and planning. What follows is a Twitter and faux blogpost dramatization of these court cases.
References
Bancroft, Angus. 2000. “‘No Interest in Land’: Legal and Spatial Enclosure of Gypsy-Travellers in Britain.” Space & Polity 4 (1)
Bowles, S. (1991). “What Markets Can – And Cannot – Do”. In: Challenge 34.4
Abby is in her first year of the City and Regional Planning Master’s Program, and is looking forward to sharing all she has learned with her future employers. She previously studied Sociology and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Before coming to UNC, Abby could be found galivanting through her native Philadelphia (Go Birds!). Her planning interests include climate adaptations, sustainable development, and fostering community engagement. Outside of planning, you can find her grabbing a bagel sandwich, watching horror movies, and wishing for better public transit.
100 million. That’s how many Americans, including 28 million children, do not have access to a neighborhood park.[1] Despite the seeming abundance of local natural spaces, lack of park access is a problem here in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, too – according to The Trust for Public Land, a combined 23,909 residents (~30%) of both towns live farther than a 10 minute walk from a municipal park.
Parks are an important public resource known to reduce pollution, enhance water quality, increase climate resilience, provide cooling, and improve mental and physical health.[2] In the case of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, thousands of children are not able to experience the improved health and cognitive function, strong motor coordination, reduced stress, and enhanced social skills that having a neighborhood natural environment to play in can provide.[3]
Despite the known importance of the outdoors to child health and well-being, not all families live in a place that provides equitable access to these spaces. US census tracts with large numbers of families with children under 18 are nearly twice as likely to live in nature-deprived areas than families without.[1]And where parks exist, those in nonwhite neighborhoods are on average half as large and nearly five times as crowded as those in majority-white neighborhoods.[2]
So how did we get here? The inequitable access to natural spaces seen today is the direct result of racist city planning policies such as segregation, zoning, and redlining that restricted access to recreational amenities including parks for Black families.[3]Discrimination and racism have profoundly impacted human settlement and natural preservation patterns in the US, leading to the barriers to parks and recreation still present in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and beyond.[4]
Chapel Hill Community Center Park (Source: Town of Chapel Hill, NC)
Fortunately, there is something we can do to ensure every child, no matter their demographics, has access to a neighborhood park to play in. Chapel Hill and Carrboro should follow the lead of New York City’s “Schoolyards to Playgrounds” program, a creative policy solution to limited available space and funding for the creation of new community parks. Launched in 2007 by former mayor Michael Bloomberg, this project included a $111 million investment to “transform 290 schoolyards into vibrant community parks by 2010.”[5]
The city identified schoolyards as both an available and underutilized resource. Only used a few hours a day by just the school population, these recreational facilities offered tremendous potential to improve neighborhood health and well-being.[6]The rest of the time, most schoolyards were locked and closed to the surrounding community during evenings, weekends, and school breaks.[7] Hundreds of existing playgrounds, many only needing minimal renovations, could become a key community resource for physical, mental, and environmental health benefits.[8]
NYC’s program prioritized the immediate opening of 69 schools that already had well-maintained playgrounds to the public, and then focused on improvements to the remaining schools, such as adding play equipment, turf fields, gardens, sports courts, benches, trees, and outdoor classrooms.[9]Between 2007 and 2013, this partnership between the Parks & Recreation department and the school district transformed approximately 150 “part-time schoolyards” into full-time playgrounds open to the entire community.[10]The program also provides a manual for breaking down institutional barriers and practicing successful community participatory design – through a 6 month process, the city enlisted kids and their families to envision an accessible, inclusive, and overall fun space for children.[11]
P.S. 213 Schoolyard Renovation in Brooklyn (Source: Trust for Public Land)
Despite the Schoolyard to Playgrounds program’s promise and initial success, the city is far behind its ambitious goal of 290 newly available public parks and over a decade beyond the initial target date. There are also notable equity concerns, as neighborhoods in the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Manhattan have not reaped the benefits of the program and still have far too few playgrounds despite experiencing a tremendous increase in population nine years and younger.[12]The anticipated benefits of increased park access, such as improved child physical and respiratory health, student academic performance, air quality, temperature, overall community health, and community safety remain unavailable to far too many young children across the city.[13]
If NYC’s program teaches us anything, it is the importance of dedicated funding for recreational facilities maintenance, whether a schoolyard or a public park. As of 2019, the city ranks 48th in playgrounds per capita among the 100 largest US cities, and 521 park playgrounds have been found to have at least one hazardous feature requiring immediate attention.[14] Since the launch of Schoolyards to Playgrounds, the child population has also grown substantially in neighborhoods across the city, yet the expansion of recreational spaces and opportunities has not kept up. With fewer than five playgrounds per 10,000 children in 15 neighborhoods, as well as over 25 percent of playgrounds in many districts designated “unacceptable” by inspectors, NYC offers a cautionary tale as to the financial support necessary to make a program successful and sustainable.[15] This innovative schoolyards-to-playgrounds model has since been replicated in cities across the US, including Philadelphia, Newark, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.[16] Chapel Hill and Carrboro should consider joining this growing list of cities using creative policy solutions to turn underutilized school playgrounds into parks the entire neighborhood can enjoy. But as we learned from New York City, this program cannot be successful without the widespread support of departments, schools, businesses, and community members across Chapel Hill and Carrboro. It is time for us to work together to make our community healthier, safer, and more fun for all residents young and old.
[2] Bright, R. M., Davin, E., O’Halloran, T., Pongratz, J., Zhao, K., & Cescatti, A. (2017, March 27). Local temperature response to land cover and management change driven by non-radiative processes. Nature Climate Change, 7, 296-302
[3] Strife, S., & Downey, L. (2009, March). Childhood Development and Access to Nature: A New Direction for Environmental Inequality Research. (122, Ed.) Organization & Environment, 22(1), 99.
Emma Vinella-Brusher is a third-year dual degree Master’s student in City and Regional Planning and Public Health interested in equity, mobility, and food security. Born and raised in Oakland, CA, she received her undergraduate degree in Environmental Studies from Carleton College before spending four years at the U.S. Department of Transportation in Cambridge, MA. In her free time, Emma enjoys running, bike rides, live music, and laughing at her own jokes.
Edited by Ryan Ford
Featured image: Playground. Source: RODNAE Productions
Professional planners need special knowledge to accomplish their core tasks. We know this. It may be even more important that planners understand why they do these tasks. This was one of Mitch Silver’s main messages as he connected the dots between ethics and outcomes in the planning profession.
The celebrated planner graced the DCRP with a presentation on November 18, thanks to the Siler Distinguished Lecture Series and a special grant from the College. Silver’s list of credentials could fill a book. Suffice it to say that he is one of a select few in the AICP College of Fellows, and that he famously served as the New York City Parks Commissioner, Planning Director for the City of Raleigh, and President of the APA. Today, he presents to planners and developers across the country as a consultant with McAdams.
Silver’s words for DCRP focused on planning with purpose — the motivations for planners’ work. He asked planners to think about their Code of Ethics, which centers on the public good. He also highlighted the ethical commitments of allied professions and meditated on the Creed that professional engineers profess upon licensing. He advised young planners to see their ethics as a compass and a rudder. He asked that we feel and live our ethics, not just talk about them or use them for cover. In short, he advised that planners “be their values.”
Silver did a brilliant job cutting through the jargon on diversity, equity, and inclusion to get at the core messages of this movement. He noted that he—and other insightful planners—prioritized DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusion) long before it became an institutional slogan and a must-have. He noted that the growing clutter of verbal soup and bureaucracy regarding DEI can get in the way of real outcomes. What, he asked, are the possible consequences of naming a DEI officer for your organization? A positive outcome might be showing that the organization will dedicate resources to inclusion. A negative outcome might be an absolution of responsibility in other areas of the organization. Shouldn’t the whole organization need to live these values? Shouldn’t all resources be deployed with a mind to inclusion?
In this vein, Mitch Silver suggested that equity—an idea usually communicated with lengthy, complex metaphors—can be better communicated as fairness. Fairness. People understand the idea of fairness. Silver suggested that even a child can tell the fair from the unfair.
Silver talked through a policy of fairness in New York’s system of public parks. When he took the job in 2014, his team systematically reviewed where the City has spent funds on parks. Though NYC had spent hundreds of millions on parks in the preceding two decades, more than 200 parks had not received a single dime. This, said Silver, was not fair.
To remedy the situation, he “bumped those parks to the front of the long line for funding.” He shared truly touching stories of transformation. Fenced off asphalt slabs punctured by runaway weeds became places of joy and sanctuary. Children’s lives became richer overnight. The social worlds of seniors and disabled people were infused with energy.
Mitchell also stressed what he called “the down payment.” In many scenarios, a down payment is what cities must make to build public confidence. When walking into a public engagement session, Silver advises, don’t come in and ask people for their input. Especially in communities where the input has been chronically ignored for decades, such a request can ring hollow. Instead, come to the public when you are able to say, “we have two million dollars already committed to spending on your priorities. Tell us how to spend it.”
Down payments are made in many ways. When NYC’s underfunded parks moved to the front of the line, a full rebuild couldn’t be launched for all of them at once. So, the Parks staff made a down payment in the form of fresh coats of paint, new grass, new benches, taking down fences, and incorporating the sidewalk as the outer sphere of the park.
Silver also discussed ways to reach the public on the real terms of their lives. He advised embracing non-traditional tools. Under his watch, and during the lockdowns of the pandemic, NYC Parks put signs on trees reading, “It’s Okay to Hug Me.” They took down “No Loitering” signs in parks and replaced some with pro-loitering signs. After all, says Silver, loitering is what we do in parks.
Loitering is for parks, hugging is for trees, and planning is for people. Mitch Silver would have planners remember that. Be fair, be honest, and be creative. With these commitments as a down payment, planners should have much less trouble identifying and supporting the public good.
Lance is a second-generation urban planner with a passion for economic development strategies that center natural resource conservation and community uplift. He served as Managing Editor of the Urban Journal at Brown University, Section Editor at the College Hill Independent, and Senior Planner for the City of Grand Junction. Hailing from sunny Colorado, he earned his BA in Urban Studies at Brown and will earn his Master in City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2023. Outside of work, he can be found on his bicycle, in the woods, or on the rugby pitch.
Attendees at the 2022 APA-NC Conference were relieved to return to an in-person format after two years of virtual events during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Planners from cities and firms throughout the state gathered in Winston-Salem from September 13th to 16th. They shared updates from their work, shared laughs, and considered the evolving practice of planning in North Carolina.
Architect and urban designer Dan Parolek delivered a compelling keynote presentation featuring recent work by his firm, Opticos. He shared stories of major development code revisions and innovative master plans throughout the country. Much of this work focuses on form-based codes and the diversification of housing typologies.
Parolek’s presentation reflected the teachings in his seminal book, Missing Middle Housing: Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today’s Housing Crisis, named a Top Urban Planning Book of 2020 by Planetizen. Parolek shared slides from the recent Prairie Queen plan for New Urbanist bungalows outside Omaha, NE, and noted that demonstrated demand for walkable neighborhoods had made a case for missing middle housing increasingly self-explanatory.
Amidst sessions on natural hazards, traffic calming, and the overhaul of Charlotte’s Unified Development Ordinance, students and alumni from the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning made several appearances. Awards for recent successes were made to John Anagnost (MCRP ’16) of Raleigh and Ben Berolzheimer (MCRP ’20) of Carrboro, while Lauren Prunkl (MCRP ’22) received the Outstanding Student of the year award. Recent alum Julia Maron (MCRP ’22) presented on Natural Hazard Resilience at a Regional Scale with Julia Maron with her colleagues from Kleinfelder.
The Carolina Planning Journal also made its mark on the proceedings. Former Angles Editor Emma Vinella-Brusher moderated a discussion between CPJ podcast host Michael English and CPJ Editor-in-Chief, Lance Gloss. The discussion covered the intersection of equity and media in planning, from the rise of TikTok as a news source to the potential of social media and print media to advance social justice. Fifty engaged attendees asked questions about building accurate knowledge in an era of unclear bias and rampant misinformation.
Emma Vinella-Brusher, Lance Gloss, and Michael English
Overall, the conference was rousing, thanks to the leadership of the APA-NC steering committee and a particularly heavy lift by Tiffany White at the City of Winston-Salem. Planners returned to their home communities across the state more energized, reconnected, and better informed.
If you’d like to learn more about APA North Carolina, check out our website.
Lance is a second-generation urban planner with a passion for economic development strategies that center natural resource conservation and community uplift. He served as Managing Editor of the Urban Journal at Brown University, Section Editor at the College Hill Independent, and Senior Planner for the City of Grand Junction. Hailing from sunny Colorado, he earned his BA in Urban Studies at Brown and will earn his Master in City and Regional Planning at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2023. Outside of work, he can be found on his bicycle, in the woods, or on the rugby pitch.
This past May, I started working with the Southeast and Caribbean Disaster Resilience Partnership (SCDRP) as a Program Coordinator. The SCDRP is a coalition of public and private organizations that collectively seeks to strengthen the resilience of communities to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of natural hazards and climate change. SCDRP is the broadest regional collaborative network for professionals in emergency management, climate adaptation, disaster preparedness, recovery, and resilience in the U.S. Southeast and the Caribbean.
This was a position that piqued my interest because of my passion for urban planning and communication. I’ve always enjoyed doing creative work and creating content as well as event planning. In the past, I was able to work in positions that allowed me to plan conferences and learn graphic design. But working with SCDRP has been a unique opportunity for me to apply these interests of mine to disaster resilience. Through this partnership, I have met many inspiring professionals in the field and have been able to envision the type of career I want to pursue after graduate school.
SCDRP’s Mission, Vision, & Objectives
Over the past couple of years, our network has evolved into a cross-sectoral, regional forum for resilience professionals from the public, private, and non-government sectors. SCDRP provides a forum to build relationships and deepen communities’ resilience capacity through targeted regional coordination events, outreach to and engagement with government officials and businesses, support for public policy research, and hosting an annual regional convening.
The partnership was originally named the Southeast Disaster Recovery Partnership. It was awarded a 2016 Coastal Resilience Grant that funded projects in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. In January 2019, the partnership wanted to bring the value of the network to Caribbean territories and continue sharing lessons learned. It also changed the “R” in its title from “Recovery” to “Resilience” and became the Southeast and Caribbean Disaster Resilience Partnership.
SCDRP is an affiliate program of the Southeast Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association (SECOORA). SECOORA’s region spans the coastal areas of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. SECOORA’s mission is to observe, understand, and increase awareness of our coastal ocean; promoting knowledge, economic and environmental health through strong regional partnerships. Together, SCDRP and SECOORA work in tandem to increase community engagement throughout the Southeast and Caribbean.
The scale of disasters and climate-related impacts faced in the U.S. Southeast and Caribbean territories and nations require vested interests to protect and transform high-risk communities. SCDRP’s efforts reflect a deep commitment to collaboration across sectors to strengthen the region’s capacity to address common issues resulting from disaster and climate impacts.
Leveraging the SCDRP’s network of resilience, recovery, and adaptation professionals, the Partnership is expanding the monthly webinar to Caribbean countries, directly engaging Caribbean participants, and arranging featured speakers from Caribbean nations to enhance peer-to-peer learning opportunities across the region and internationally. This work will continue to help maintain networks of experts in the United States and the greater Caribbean. This initiative will facilitate information-sharing about successful disaster preparedness, adaptation, and resilience projects throughout the four U.S. Southeast States, two U.S. Caribbean territories, and multiple Caribbean nations.
Our current members range from those who focus on response and recovery planning to those who are interested in long-term climate adaptation. By convening an extensive and growing network of professionals from the public and private sectors who focus on building resilience in the Southeast and Caribbean region, the SCDRP has the potential to serve as the primary resource for knowledge, information, and best practices in resilience and climate adaptation.
We host virtual monthly partnership meetings on the fourth Thursday of every month at 10 am EST, where we hear from guest speakers and share resources. During our August meeting, we heard from Dr. Greg Guannel about the work of the Caribbean Green Technology Center (CGTC) in the U.S. Virgin Islands (https://youtu.be/4maZ3iJT948). We also host annual working meetings focused on the exchange of recovery and resilience information. Our 2023 Annual Meeting will take place in Miami, Florida on January 24th and 25th. All are welcome to attend, including students! This is a great opportunity to meet other professionals in the disaster resilience field.
If you’d like to learn more and join our future meetings, check out our website: scdrp.secoora.org.
Josephine Jeni Justin is a second year Masters of City and Regional Planning student at UNC Chapel Hill. She is pursuing a Natural Hazards Resilience certificate and is specializing in land use and environmental planning and transportation planning. Currently, she is working with the Southeast and Disaster Resilience Partnership (SCDRP) as a Program Coordinator and San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) as an Innovation Team intern. She completed her undergraduate degree in Political Science and Communication Studies at UNC Charlotte. Before starting her master’s program, she worked with the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) and as an AmeriCorps California Climate Action Corps Fellow with the City of Los Angeles’ Climate Emergency Mobilization Office (CEMO). Josephine is passionate about pursuing a career at the intersection of community engagement, environmental justice, and storytelling.
Currently, I am conducting fieldwork research for my dissertation at Yokosuka, Japan, approximately 70 kilometers south of Tokyo and facing Tokyo Bay on the east. This place has been developed as a naval port and base since U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry first landed in Japan and demanded to open the nation to trade 170 years ago. Nowadays, it has the only homeport for American aircraft carriers outside the U.S.
My research focuses on the “extra-ordinary ordinary life” of people who live next to one of the U.S. military bases in Japan, the Yokosuka Naval Base. By “extra-ordinary ordinary life,” I am referring to a precarious coexistence in which residents are subject to actions by non-citizens, where security and danger, peace and war live side by side. However, this blog post will not introduce the details of this U.S. base but about the land they use.
People in Yokosuka have less strong feelings against the U.S. military bases on their land. One of the explanations is that the land the U.S. military base is located now was an Imperial Japanese Naval Base. “It’s just changed from one military to the other military,” was one of the common answers I heard from my interlocutors (collaborators).
After the defeat of the Second World War, Japan was disarmed. The former Imperial Japanese Naval assets (facilities, lands, and properties) are succeeded by U.S. Forces in Japan and Japanese Self-Defense Forces. The rest of the assets were transferred to local governments (municipalities) or private enterprises, either free of charge or at nominal cost, based on “the Act on Reconstruction of Cities that Formerly Served as Naval Ports [1].”
“The Act on Reconstruction of Cities that Formerly Served as Naval Ports” is designed to revive the four former naval port cities (Yokosuka, Kure, Sasebo, and Maizuru) where their employment rate and population declined sharply after the Imperial Japanese Navy being dissolved by taking advantage on what they have: the former military assets. The law was approved by the Diet (the Japanese National Assembly) and by local referendum in each city and came into effect in 1950.
Based on the law, former Imperial Japanese Naval assets have been converted and utilized for factories, schools, parks, roads, water supplies, public housing, and others. Taking Yokosuka City as an example, the Nissan Motor Corporation Oppama Plant, Yokosuka Sogo High School, Nagai Seaside Park Soleil Hill, etc., are constructed on lands that Imperial Japanese Navy used.
A ruin of a gun battery in Sarushima (Monkey Island). This island was a fortress of the Imperial Japanese Navy and is converted into a park.
Why is this law related to the U.S. military in Japan? If we compare the four formal port cities, the rates of land conversion of these four former naval port cities from high to low are Kure (92.7%), Maizuru(85.9%), Yokosuka(74.4%), and Sasebo(59.5%) [2]. Yokosuka and Sasebo are cities that host the U.S. military bases, which is one of the reasons the two cities have lower land conversion rates than the other two [3].
Moreover, the U.S. military in Japan has been handing over the U.S.-occupied land to Japan bit by bit. Yokosuka City has received the returned land for city development from the central government by paying lower than the market price or even without payment [4]. Other cities, which host U.S. military bases but were not former naval port cities, must pay for the returned land based on the market price, or it will be sold to the private sector. This difference, of course, makes those base host cities, such as Sagamihara City, feel unfair. [5]
One more interesting issue related to this law is its purpose of promoting the peaceful use of former military facilities in those port cities. As the first article of the law states, “the purpose of this act is to transform the four cities that had developed as naval ports to peace-time industrial coast cities, aiming to achieve the ideal of peaceful Japan.”[6] Based on the tone of this article, it is a law for demilitarization of the former naval port cities.
However, opposite to the aim of the law, Yokosuka is now a city hosting one of the most strategically important U.S. military bases. Yokosuka city government also utilizes the U.S. military base and Imperial Japanese naval port heritage to promote tourism and develop Yokosuka. Militourism could be a concept to describe this complexity of tourism and militarism. [7]
To be more specific, the city’s tourism capitalizes on the military image and history as a resource to attract domestic and international tourists. Albeit a successful developmental strategy, one might also be wary that this promotional tactic could also be used as a way to normalize the spread of militarized values into civilian life and embellish the presence of U.S. military forces in Japan. For instance, a cruise of Yokosuka Naval Port for seeing the U.S. battleships and submarines, a U.S.-Japan friendship base historical tour, and certainly no tourists would like to miss the two most famous cuisines, (U.S.) Navy Burger and Kaigun (Imperial Japanese Navy) Curry, when they visit Yokosuka. I am also preparing my lunch from a boil-in-the-bag Kaigun Curry while considering the future of this former naval port city and now a peace-time industrial coast city hosting the military forces from another country.
[7] “Teaiwa, Teresia. 1999.”Reading Paul Gauguin’s Nau Nau with Epili Hua’ofa’s Kisses in the Nederends: Militourism, Feminism, and the Polynesian’s Body.” In Inside Out: Literature, Cultural Politics, and Identity in the New Pacific, edited by Vilsoni Hereniko and Rob Wilson,249-263. NY: Rowman & Littlefield.
Chu-Wen Hsieh is a PhD candidate at UNC’s Department of Anthropology. She is interested in military bases, social movements, nationalism, empire, and Okinawa and Japan. Her current research focuses on the everyday life of local communities around U.S. military bases in Japan. She graduated with a Master of Arts in Anthropology and Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Political Science from National Taiwan University.
Edited by Jo Kwon
Featured Image: Azumashima is an island the Imperial Japanese Navy used as an ammunition storage area and now is the Us Navy Azuma Storage Area.
Managing our day to day lives is becoming increasingly difficult without the use of modern technology. However, approximately 32 million people in the United States do not have the skills to confidently navigate and utilize computers [1]. Computer skills are increasingly fundamental in K-12 schools, with much of a child’s educational experience built around technology and internet use. Adults who did not have the benefit of learning these skills while they were young are experiencing an increasing digital divide between themselves and the younger generation. That said, this issue is not limited to one demographic. As technology continues to evolve everyone requires continual education and assistance to remain digitally literate. The Community Workshop Series (CWS) works to close the digital divide and provide assistance to those in our community who are learning computer fundamentals for the first time and those looking to expand their current knowledge.
Learning to use technology and building essential skills can be difficult without the proper resources. Investing in digital literacy benefits not only the individual but the community. Being able to access computers and the internet increases a community’s civic engagement and people use technology to search for information about their local government; public transportation options; information about voting and upcoming elections; new economic opportunities; and most companies require an online application from prospective employees. The internet reduces the amount of time spent searching for a job and makes it easier to see what positions are available. A basic level of computer literacy is a common job expectation, and an online presence increases visibility for small businesses. Healthcare providers are increasing their use of online forms for patients and online portals are used to create appointments and connect doctors with their patients [2]. Local and global news resources are widely available online, making finding and evaluating this information more critical than ever. These resources and opportunities are cut off for those lacking computer skills.
The Community Workshop Series works with local libraries to host classes to increase digital literacy in the community. University students volunteer to teach classes that provide basic tech skills and computer fundamentals; internet searching, how to use programs, online job searching, evaluating online sources, email basics, smartphones, Google applications, and more based on community needs. Through direct interaction with the community, CWS continuously adjust classes to ensure they are valuable to participants and responsive to their needs. Recently, CWS has been able to begin offering computer basics courses in Spanish to better serve the surrounding community in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Durham. CWS serves the community through digital literacy and improving information access and provides local university students with an opportunity for service learning. Students teach classes, help develop and update curriculum, and work directly with communities to help close the digital divide.
To learn more about the Community Workshop Series or volunteer opportunities, please visit our website https://cws.web.unc.edu/ or contact us directly at silscommunityworkshopseries@gmail.com or rbritta@ad.unc.edu.
Citations
[1] Kendall Latham, “Empower Communities to Strengthen Their Digital Literacy Skills,” Dell Technologies Social Impact Blog, June 27, 2022. https://www.dell.com/en-us/blog/empower-communities-to-strengthen-their-digital-literacy-skills/
[2] Colorado State Library, “Benefits of a Digitally Literate Community,” (infographic), 2013. https://www.maine.gov/msl/libs/tech/diglit/benefits.pdf
Rachael Brittain is the Coordinator of CWS and a second year Library Science student with a concentration in Archives and Records Management at UNC’s School of Library and Information Science. She has an interest in material preservation and community engagement. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Arts in Music from Metropolitan State University of Denver. Any spare moments are spent reading, listening to music, and hiking.
Edited by Jo Kwon
Featured Image: CWS Logo. Photo Credit: Jess Epsten
This post is part 2 of a series that chronicles the history of prominent LGBTQ+ bars and nightclubs in Durham, NC, through an intersectional lens. Part 1 is available here.
By Mad Bankson & Duncan Dodson
To the 80s, and BEYOND!
As the eighties rolled around, gay people around the world were forced to become more visible. The AIDS crisis and increasing attacks from the Christian right led people to advocate for their right to exist and survive, necessitating more of a public presence. [1] This increased visibility led to a significant shift in queer culture, especially when it came to bar and club life. Though discretion was still preferred by many, there was more social space for gay establishments, and secret bars and informal gay spaces became less central in queer life. Though Durham was still a small Southern town, the changes of the eighties allowed it to expand into something radically beautiful.
The Power Company
Opened in the early 1980s, the Power Company was known as “the best gay club between DC and Atlanta .” [2] Jeff Inman, a DJ there from 1984 to 1988 said of the club, “The Power Company was a gay force. It was Grand [sic] period, packed with the who’s who.” [3] Located on Main Street in the building that is now occupied by Teasers strip club, the Power Company was expansive in size, sporting a multi-level layout with several bars, a mezzanine lounge, a dance floor lined with humongous speakers, artful lighting, and several disco balls. There was also a conspicuous staircase that served as a kind of unofficial stage for people to walk up and down under the gaze of fellow clubgoers. [4] In addition, the top floor hosted several “don’t ask don’t tell” dressing rooms that presumably offered privacy for more intimate encounters.
The Power Company provided a rare space of reprieve for people to truly let loose and be themselves without homophobic harassment. One former attendee said of their first trip to the club, “‘So this is what it’s like to be gay and open and not have to be beat-up or worried.” While it was explicitly named as a gay club, like many gay spaces in this time period in Durham, like-minded allies were also welcomed. The club was famous for having a large and loyal body of regulars as well as for being visited by many kinds of people, including Duke professors.
Furthermore, the relative openness afforded by the space went beyond just sexual orientation and gender identity. According to late Durham queer leader Mignon Cooper, the Power Company was also known as a place where interracial couples, immigrants, older people, and even straight couples would come to enjoy a welcoming and joyful club environment with a wide variety of people. [5]
Unfortunately, the club shut down in 2000, marking the end of an era for queer Durham. This came after a period of controversy surrounding the club in the late 1990s, during which the club’s downtown neighbors were highly agitated by the noise level, resulting in frequent police visits. According to the WRAL article, Durham ponders whether nightclub is a public nuisance; the Power Company began to draw negative attention from police and city officials after these disturbances at the club culminated in a person being murdered outside. [6]
One former club attendee noted that the club closed “after the crowd gradually changed from gay to ‘urban’ and people got shot in the parking lot.” [7] While this comment about shifting demographics may simply speak to the eventual popularity of the club among all kinds of audiences, it resonates strongly with other racially coded negative discourse about the character of downtown Durham in the late 1990s and early 2000s. To this day, the Power Company is still a frequent subject of conversation in Durham, much beloved by gays and their allies who used to attend. [8]
Ringside
In 2000, Boxer’s Ringside Bar opened for business. Ringside was a four-story artist club and music venue located at 308 West Main Street, a building that is now occupied by startup offices. “An amazing dive of a firetrap,” the club was famous for its funky, eclectic vibe, with a library, a large, speakeasy style sitting area, and dance floor/stage space. [9] By all accounts, it lacked a coherent theme or aesthetic.
Ringside was never marketed as a gay bar, though it seems that it functionally operated as the primary queer hangout space in town at the time. The club’s owner, a gay man named Michael Penny, had previously owned Boxer’s, a smaller explicitly gay bar. Boxer’s, which opened in 1989, was located in “a flying saucer shaped building off 15-501.” When he decided to open Ringside, Penny said “I never wanted it to be a gay bar. I never wanted it to be anything.” He later remarked that it was “a gay bar for straight people.”
The primary goal of Ringside was to create an anchor for the Durham music scene, which despite its many talented acts mostly performed in Chapel Hill. Alongside Duke Coffeehouse, the club succeeded at this goal and hosted many local acts during its lifespan. Unfortunately, the queer/art scene in Durham still lacks a solid anchor even today.
Ringside was the type of weird and wonderful artsy bar that could never compete with today’s high rent downtown Durham environment. After looking for the space for two years, Penny chose the building specifically because of Durham’s dense urban feel and low rents. Even in 2002 when Ringside’s owners and operators were interviewed by Indy Week, there were already concerns about how urban development might impact the space. While the long-term vision was to create a sort of multidisciplinary art space “not just for white hipsters,” Penny and his counterparts were concerned that the owners of the building would soon realize its value and opt to “turn the area into a big RTP.” The exact reasons for Ringside’s closing are not easily clear in the public record, but it seems likely that the image of the future they feared likely came true. Wild and wonderful, it seems by all accounts that Ringside was indeed “too sketchy” to attract high traffic consistently in a city that was undergoing rapid change as tech and medicine money flooded the city. [10]
In contrast to highly beloved venues like Pinhook and Power Company, Ringside’s gritty underground history seems to have faded more from the popular consciousness in Durham. Though its strange, multipurpose artistic vision does remain in the digital journalistic record, the extent of the gay happenings and events that likely occurred there is not well known. However, one remnant of the bar is still with us. Ringside’s old sign is posted on the wall above the doorway at the Pinhook, Durham’s only surviving gay bar today.
The next post focuses on 711 Rigsbee Avenue, another important gathering spot for queer communities from across the Triangle.
Mad Bankson is a planner and critical geographer based in Durham, NC. Their interdisciplinary research brings together housing, land justice, urban history, and data analysis. Mad graduated from DCRP with a concentration in Land Use and Environmental Planning in 2022.
Duncan Dodson is a queer planner and researcher from Oklahoma. Community engagement efforts, disaster-relief administration, and data-driven conservation in Durham and DC brought Duncan to Carolina. He graduated from DCRP and explored the mitigation of climate change impacts on low-income and marginalized communities. He is most interested in strategies designed and driven by community members and organizations, and those that center on climate justice.
Featured Image: 2019 Durham Pride. Photo Credit: Jo Kwon
This post was originally published on September 17, 2021. As we celebrate Pride month, we go back to one of the archives.
By Mad Bankson & Duncan Dodson
Introduction
A 2019 Durham-based advertising campaign asserted that “Durham is the most diverse, proud and vibrant destination in North Carolina.”[i] For those outside the state, Durham is most well-known for housing Duke University and for its large research industry. However, the Bull City’s history is defined by the presence of vibrant Black communities like Hayti, Walltown, and Bragtown, Civil Rights demonstrations and activism, burgeoning immigrant enclaves, labor struggles in the textile and tobacco mills, and much, much more.
Interwoven throughout these narratives, less visible but no less central, is a diverse queer history. Durham has long been a location of queer celebration and activism and features a somewhat quieter history as a lesbian and transgender stronghold in North Carolina.[ii] In qualifying the City’s assertion of diversity, this series traces Durham’s LGBTQ+ community from the 1960s through the present by examining the history of the primary gathering spaces for its community members: bars and nightclubs. Historic and modern accounts of queer representation in the city affirm a queer community centered around safety, expression, and activism, much of which was cultivated by bars and similar queer enclaves.
This series chronicles the history of prominent bars and nightclubs in the area, with some discussion of such spaces in connection with other marginalized groups along lines of race and class. It draws much of its fact basis from the archival work of the Love and Liberation Durham LGBTQ+ History Project assembled by the Durham Public Library, online forums, oral histories, and alternative newspapers.
No comprehensive research project of this sort exists, therefore this series aims for breadth over depth, addressing the reality that much of queer history is challenging or impossible to recover. As Durham continues to rapidly grow and bring new interests, it still stands to be seen what will come of queer bars and meeting spaces in an area with exacerbating economic issues, soaring rent, redevelopment pressures, and growing divides among people of color and white communities in space. Tracing gay bars and inclusive spaces through space and place offers some insight into these divides and helps identify what has been lost and which vacuums remain to be filled in Durham’s queer nightlife spaces.
This series is broken up into three parts. Part I tells the story of some of the first queer spaces in the Research Triangle through from the 1960’s through the 1970’s. The second part chronicles queer spaces from the 1980’s to more recently, focusing on notable spaces such as The Power Company and Ringside. The last section of this series focuses on Durham’s current queer bars and night clubs.
Pre-1970s
In attempting to create a historic archive of Durham’s LGBTQ+ community, researchers at Durham County Library remarked that “Little documentation about LGBTQ life prior to the 1970s exists, especially for trans people and people of color.”[iii] Because queerness was considered a vice, gay happenings were rarely put into the written record. Much of what we know from this period comes from oral history, particularly an interview with Bill Hull, a white gay man born in 1947 who lived in the area his whole life. Hull describes the Durham-Chapel Hill gay community prior to 1970 as “insular, but friendly — centered mostly around small, underground gay bars, close friends and private parties.”[iv] Though they were far from accepted by mainstream society in a conservative Southern state, available accounts suggest that gay people during this time were mostly left alone as long as they were not publicly visible or flamboyant.
The most famous bar location from the 1960s is the Ponderosa. Located in a “nice little colonial house” near the entrance of the Hope Valley subdivision between Chapel Hill and suburban Durham (“the boonies” according to Hull), the Ponderosa was a private club that required a secret passphrase to enter. The property had a small diner with a drive-in grill setup. Behind the diner was a large concrete building where people would party and dance, an extremely rare type of establishment for the time. Both men and women attended the well-known queer parties here. In addition, one visitor recalled that the Ponderosa was almost always attended by at least a few black people even in the 1960s.[v]
The Ponderosa attracted little outside attention. Though some attendees experienced gay-bashing from Marines (who Hull speculated were likely closeted themselves), the club amazingly had few police interactions. The city authorities were aware of the illegal land use and gay meetings, but “as long as there was no trouble there, as long as people are discreet and don’t break traffic laws and don’t do it in the street and scare the horses, there would be no problem.”[vi] In keeping with the general theme of queerness being allowed to exist in Durham so long as it was not hyper visible, Ponderosa never experienced a raid in its almost decades-long lifespan. When or why it closed is not well known.
Chapel Hill and Raleigh had more active queer scenes during the1970’s. While Durham gays gathered unofficially in places such as the Washington Duke Hotel bar (now Jack Tar restaurant), both cities had official established gay bars. Chapel Hill, home to a very large and connected queer community, was generally much more open than Durham (at least for white gay men). Bill Hull spoke of the cruising scene of UNC’s Wilson Library and several residence and academic buildings. There is less information about Raleigh, but it did have at least one gay bar called The Anchorage that opened in the early 1950s. It should be noted that gay men and lesbians did not interact much very much at these places. Many gay Durhamites made the drive to these places as well, just as today there is significant interchange among the various queer nightlife locations in all three cities.[vii]
The next post continues this narrative into the 1980’s and beyond.
Mad Bankson is a queer planner and geographer raised in the South. In their capacity as a researcher at DataWorks NC, Mad focuses on issues related to property ownership, gentrification, and eviction in their current home city of Durham, North Carolina. A recent graduate of the Master’s in City and Regional Planning concentrating in land use and environmental planning, Mad is most interested in planning practice that centers land justice, climate resiliency, and community self-governance.
Duncan Dodson is a queer planner and researcher from Oklahoma. Community engagement efforts, disaster-relief administration, and data-driven conservation in Durham and DC brought Duncan to Carolina. He was a second-year Master’s student in City and Regional Planning, exploring mitigation of climate change impacts on low-income and marginalized communities. He is most interested in strategies designed and driven by community members and organizations, and those that center on climate justice.
Edited byEve Lettau
Featured image courtesy of Durham County Library, Meredith Emmitt Papers
If the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) approves the Central Business District Program’s Environmental Assessment, New York City will be the first in the nation to implement a congestion pricing program, something it desperately needs to minimize congestion in Manhattan and to raise revenue for overdue transit improvements, but it must help make transportation easier for those it aims to serve – not harder.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Reform and Traffic Mobility Act, approved in April 2019, included a tolling program to be facilitated by the MTA’s Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA).[i] Revenue will be used to fund the MTA’s capital program, which is in dire need of funding for system modernization improvements. While the program has been criticized by certain residents for unfair tolling, the MTA assures the public that the program is necessary for reducing congestion, decreasing travel times, and improving air quality.[ii] However, the success and overall acceptability of the program relies on the MTA’s ability to adequately address real or perceived concerns about inequitable impacts.
According to the MTA, 95 percent of trips to the Manhattan CBD by low-income populations are made using public transit. Further, fewer than one percent of commuters to Manhattan’s CBD are low-income individuals who drive,[iii] meaning only a very small portion of low-income commuters will be directly burdened by the toll.
The program still must consider the effects on low-income car users from the outer boroughs, however. In 2008, FHWA produced a report titled Lessons Learned from International Experience in Congestion Pricing, which summarizes some successes and failures of other congestion pricing programs. This report found that low-income car users are most likely to be negatively affected by congestion pricing.[iv]
To address this, the MTA plans to provide discounts on commuter rail to New York City residents of up to 20 percent. It also agreed to commit funds to improve bus service from Queens to Midtown, which would improve transportation options for car-reliant households.[v] To take it a step further, a portion of the toll revenue could even be used to subsidize taxis or ride-hailing services for first/last mile connections, thereby providing even more mobility for commuters from areas with poor bus or subway access.
The FHWA also notes that the distribution of toll revenues is important for ensuring equitable results. Since all the revenue will be directed towards public transportation expenses – 80% for New York City Transit, 10% for the Long Island Rail Road, and 10% for Metro-North Railroad – the resulting improvements will be directly benefitting lower-income residents and public transportation customers.[vi]
Once the program begins operation, the TBTA is required to collaborate with the City Department of Transportation to produce biannual reports on topics such as impacts to traffic congestion, changes in traffic patterns, and environmental improvements.[vii] However, there is no specific plan to evaluate equity impacts after the program is implemented. The FHWA report notes that, while some cities have designed their policies with equity in mind, post-implementation equity analysis is lacking. Though New York City is completing the required amount of public engagement, planners could take the lead on collaborative planning and on integrating equity into the process. If the public is only engaged before the program has started, how will the city know how it impacts residents’ day-to-day lives down the road?
Another important question about the congestion pricing program: who is going to be exempt? Who is going to be eligible for a tax credit? Who is going to pay the $23 toll every day? As expected, many residents are already attending the public engagement meetings to advocate for exemption. The MTA Reform and Traffic Mobility Act exempts emergency vehicles and vehicles transporting those with disabilities, but who else will be exempt is yet to be decided.[viii] Some say that just residents of the congestion zone should be exempt; others say that suburban commuters or even off-duty police should be exempt. With equity at the forefront, the MTA must listen to these concerns and re-evaluate who should bear the burden of congestion tolls.
If the congestion pricing program is rejected, the MTA would need to cover increased capital costs somehow – which would most likely result in a fare increase. This policy would hurt most New Yorkers who utilize public transit, but especially low-income individuals who are disproportionately burdened by transportation costs. Clearly, New York City needs a congestion pricing program now more than ever. But if New York City wants their program to be a successful model for other cities, equity concerns must be seriously addressed as the details of the program become finalized.
Sophia Nelson is a first-year Master’s student in City and Regional Planning. Specializing in Transportation Planning, she is particularly interested in urban public transit systems and equitable community engagement. Sophia received her undergraduate degree from the University of Washington, where she studied urban planning and geography. Besides her interests in planning, she loves hanging with her cat, cooking, and tending to her houseplants.
