Tag: Community (Page 1 of 2)

Schoolyards: An Untapped Community Resource?

March 7, 2023 / odrozd

By Emma Vinella-Brusher

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.

References

[1] The Trust for Public Land. (2020). The Heat is On: A Trust for Public Land Special Report.

[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.

Rowland-Shea, J., Doshi, S., Edberg, S., & Fanger, R. (2020, July 21). The Nature Gap: Confronting Racial and Economic Disparities in the Destruction and Protection of Nature in America. The Center for American Progress.

[2] The Trust for Public Land 2020

[3] KABOOM! (2021, February 23). Why the Fight for Access to Playgrounds is a Racial Justice Issue.

[4] Rowland-Shea et al. 2020

[5] Trust for Public Land (2007). “NYC Launches ‘Schoolyard to Playground’ Initiative.”

[6] New York City Global Partners (2013). Best Practice: Converting Schoolyards to Community Playgrounds

[7] New York City Global Partners 2013

[8] Cowan, Nicholas (2019). “Prioritizing New York City’s Next Schoolyard to Playground Project.” Medium.

[9] New York City Global Partners 2013

[10] Drake, S. (2018, December 10). How the Trust for Public Land is converting schoolyards to playgrounds. The Architect’s Newspaper.

[11] Cowan 2019

[12] New York City Comptroller, Bureau of Policy and Research (2019). State of Play: A New Model for NYC Playgrounds.

[13] Evidence for Action (2021). “Impact of Schoolyards to Playgrounds Renovations on Academic Performance and Health of New York City Students.”

[14] NYC Comptroller 2019

[15] NYC Comptroller 2019

[16] Drake 2018

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

From the Archives: How to Engage your Community Online

June 25, 2020 / odrozd

This week’s post was originally published by Sarah Parkins on April 19, 2018. This year has seen the world scramble to switch much of its in-person activities to an online format. What does this mean for community engagement? In her piece, Sarah Perkins shares her master’s project work, which researched the best practices for utilizing online community engagement tools.

It’s no secret that community engagement is a necessary part of planning that includes citizens in the ways that their communities are shaped. What is a secret is the best way to run community engagement processes. Planners have had varying success with engagement plans when balancing how to include as many voices as possible with getting feedback that is valuable to planning projects.

Typically community engagement is done face to face at community meetings, however it’s difficult to engage with the entire community at community meetings when there are many restraints such as time commitments, lack of accessibility, and pessimism about the ability to make a difference. There are also several drawbacks to traditional forms of engagement like public forums and charrettes, including high costs, lack of effectiveness, and being too exclusive.

While becoming increasingly frustrated with trying to navigate the Town of Chapel Hill’s website to learn more about a recent planning project, I couldn’t help but think that there has to be a better way to design websites that provide information but allow for the collection of feedback from the community. With a fair bit of research I found myself in a field of technology that I had no idea existed in the planning world: Online Community Engagement Tools.

This developing technology has allowed for towns and planning departments to increase their community outreach in the form of mobile apps, websites, or social media platforms that utilize methods of providing information and collecting feedback. These tools can be significantly cheaper, reach more people, and collect significantly richer data than traditional engagement. In recent years there has been valuable research on why we should be using technology to improve community engagement, however there hasn’t been much research on how we should be using this technology.

There are many different types of online engagement tools being developed and not every tool is ideal for specific engagement efforts. With so many different types of tools, it makes it very difficult for planners researching engagement tools to know which one is the best to pick, or even to understand all their options. Finding a list of 50+ tools on a blog post from OpenPlans, a software incubator, I decided to focus my master’s project, a year-long project as part of my degree requirements for a Masters in City & Regional Planning from UNC-Chapel Hill, on researching best practices for using these tools and creating a user guide that would assess each tool for practical use by planners.

My master’s project critiques typical community engagement efforts, explores the current field of community engagement technology, and analyzes three online engagement technology case studies to analyze best practices for using digital tools developed for community engagement. From this research, I created the user guide, assessing the 23 tools that are still publicly available, organizing them into five categories (surveys, message boards, mapping, budget simulation, and website builders), and developing a chart for each with the findings. This user guide is available to anyone interested on a website I created.

In text image_blog — Types of online engagement tools (Image credit: Author)

I hope that by creating this guide and making it available to planners it will assist communities in improving the ways that they engage with residents, making it easier to provide meaningful engagement opportunities and getting more citizens involved in the ways that their communities are shaped.

About the Author: Sarah Parkins is a master’s student in UNC’s Department of City and Regional Planning, concentrating in housing and community development. She has a bachelor’s degree in architecture, and her current academic interests include affordable housing and placemaking. When not working at the Carrboro Parks and Rec department, Sarah is baking and DIY-ing her way through Pinterest.

How to Engage your Community Online

April 19, 2018 / odrozd

Types of online engagement tools (Image credit: Author)

New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented Teens

January 5, 2018 / odrozd

In 2016, a small group urban planning enthusiasts from across North America formed a Facebook group to provide for the dearth of urbanist memes of the internet. From humble beginnings, the New Urbanist Memes for Transit Oriented Teens (NUMTOT) group has grown to over 40,000 members from around the world. From posts seeking transit-oriented recommendations to philosophical debates about planning’s most complex issues, the group has evolved into a home for more than just memes. Here are just a few of its humorous highlights from last year!

About the Author: Adam Hasan is a Junior undergraduate student studying Geography and City & Regional Planning. His research interests include understanding the actors involved in defining and redefining Global South urbanisms through social movements, governance systems, and media, as well as the history of spatial planning in post-colonial regions. Adam has previously worked with participatory informal settlement upgrading in South Africa, coastal resilience planning in Brooklyn, and was once ranked internationally as one of Simcity 4’s best city builders. In his free time he enjoys birdwatching, coffee roasting, and plays vice-skip on a local curling team.

All memes sourced from the “New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented Teens” Facebook group.

Weaving together the Threads of Our Community: Weaver Street Market

November 21, 2017 / odrozd

This piece was originally published by UNC undergraduate students Adam Hasan and Ezra Rawitsch on their personal blog, Global Third Space, on June 15, 2017.

If the sun hadn’t traced a low, southerly path across the sky that morning, it’d have seemed like the first day of autumn. A chilly breeze wound its way through the enormous oak that hangs over the Weaver Street Lawn, and dozens of people—of all ages—gathered in the patchwork shadow of the tree to take part in a ritual of great importance to this part of America: breakfast.

In fact, it was January, but the fleeting good weather belied the truth, and in the unseasonably warm morning air, the wind carried notes of new music, fresh coffee, and hearty meals shared between families and friends. The sun had brought the community back outside to a surprising and delightful patch of dirt outside this natural foods co-op. Here, as on practically every Sunday morning, they gathered to eat and chat, to unwind from the demands of an academic schedule. Weaver Street is a magnet for local academics, like the all-Slavic literary discussion group seated under the farthest reaches of the mighty oak’s canopy, or the 2015 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry who would occupy the table after them. Whether students or professors, there was little question the space was an extension of the nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: even the university Wi-Fi network has a special hub here. It’s either the cloudless sky or the sea of UNC apparel—whatever the reason, Weaver Street Market is tinted Carolina Blue.

But if Chapel Hill’s academics feel like owners of this space, they do so as a small part of a far larger and more diverse group. “It’s hard to believe a town of 60,000 people can be as international as this one,” said former Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt in an interview late last year, “and we probably have a greater international flair to our daily lives than any city of our size in the world.” But whatever international clientele the co-op serves, its success is firmly rooted in the tendency of that same diverse group to fall in love with local community. Weaver Street Market has more than 18,000 consumer-owners—all co-op members who filter through the aisles of organic food and linger in the pleasant shade outside. In a local community of fewer than 100,000 inhabitants, almost everyone in Chapel Hill and Carrboro knows or is a partial owner of this cooperative and this space. So the chilly mornings here belong to a spectrum of community members, bound by responsibility to patronize and engage with the cooperative—but not necessarily by any other commonalities. In this regard, Weaver Street is the glue that binds together a community whose disparate origins might otherwise tend to isolate.

Take Bruce as an example of Weaver Street’s ability to, well, weave together the threads of this community. He is a tall man with graying hair and a kind disposition that could put anybody at ease. But he’s not originally from Carrboro—he came here in 1998 on parole just out of a Florida prison for a crime he committed in 1980. He moved to Saxapahaw, a town about 15 miles west of Carrboro, to a place called the Human Kindness Foundation, an Ashram-based community. There, Bruce “practiced kindness and Hindu, Buddhist, and Christian meditation.” To hear Bruce tell it, Weaver Street Market was what drew him into this community:

“I stayed out there for about eight months, and then I came to Chapel Hill. I got a job at the Weaver Street bread bakery, where I baked bread for about three years. When I first got here, I didn’t dance as I do now. And if you saw me, you would see me sitting on a bench reading a book, or doing yoga, or talking to people.”

Bruce quickly found home in a community that values public access to art and music. Within four blocks of the Lawn, there are ten public murals, many of which depict Carrboro’s diversity, community values, and natural environment. Every Thursday evening and Sunday morning between spring and autumn, the Lawn regularly hosts live music from local musicians. It is through this cultural context that Bruce discovered he was a dancer.

“One day I came back for the Thursday night community. And I was sitting at the table watching some kids and a friend of mine dance around this tree that everybody loves.” Bruce paused to look affectionately at the large oak tree which towered over us before continuing, “And I looked out and I said to God, ‘God, I want to dance with the kids,’ and God said to me, ‘Well, get out there and dance with the kids.'”

Carrboro is home to medical students, lawyers, artists, and yes, even anarchists. Photo Credit: Adam Hasan

Bruce’s story is just one thread of the fabric that gives the Lawn its identity. The space is also designed as much for children as it is for adults.

“I actually live in Durham, but I come here because I’m a co-op member, and my son likes to climb the trees,” Tim, a local musician, explained to me as his son swung off a low-lying branch of an oak tree and ran up to him. When asked about why he liked the Lawn, without hesitation his son replied “because I like to climb the trees!”

Whether intentionally or not, the Lawn is a space designed for children. It is well defined, serves as a natural playground, and is always occupied by fellow parents and patrons alike.

“Really, one of the coolest things about this space,” Tim said as a smile crossed his face, “is that I can be here talking to someone, while my son is having a conversation with those people at that table over there, who are strangers – I’ve never met them before – and I can feel totally comfortable with it.” Enrique Peñalosa, mayor of Bogota, Colombia, once described children as an “indicator species” in urban space, stating “if we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people.”

Shaheen, a Muslim student at UNC from Raleigh, explains that the space offers safety for more than just children, “Carrboro feels like a really open-minded, diverse community, and I feel safe here, like no one is judging you for looking different.” She brings the girl she babysits to the Lawn as well. As she says, “I like coming here because I get to see my friends, do my homework, and be outside.” Coming to the lawn never fails to elicit the simple, utilitarian beauty of life’s everyday experiences.

“If we can testify to nothing else in this world, we can testify that it’s beautiful. Look at that!” Bruce says as he points to the sunset, “You can’t tell me that ain’t beautiful.”

“Look at that!” he says again in a similar fashion as he points to the limbs of the oak tree, “You can’t tell me that ain’t beautiful. And in the spring time, oh my God!”

The Weaver Street Market Lawn. Photo Credit: Adam Hasan

Unlike many grocery stores whose scale necessitates a car trip, the co-op appeals to daily visitors and students. Three of Chapel Hill’s fare-free bus lines make stops at the Market, and one of the area’s few paved, dedicated bike paths sends a constant stream of cyclists right into the mouth of Carrboro at Weaver Street and Main. And while it’s a bit of a hike from the UNC campus, students still make the trek even when the buses aren’t running.

For Bruce, too, the Lawn at Weaver Street Market is more than just a social space—it’s a spiritual one. “One of the beautiful things I learned through dancing is that I can get into that same sacred space I get into when I sit for hours in silent meditation,” he explained. But initially, he was worried about dancing in front of people, afraid of what they might think of him. What quickly became apparent, however, was that Carrboro was different from where he had lived before.

“It’s a very open minded town. Because when I first got here—I’m originally from New Jersey—I used to go on break, and I would be walking down the street here, and keep in mind I don’t know anybody, I’m new. And people would walk by me, and they would say ‘Good morning!’ and I would do like this…” he says as he reenacts his experience by looking around theatrically, “because I thought they were talking to somebody behind me. Because where I’m from people don’t speak to people, unless they know them. Carrboro was more open-hearted than where I grew up. And that’s why I love the town of Carrboro, and that’s why I come here all the time.”

But not everyone was willing to accept Bruce. In 2006, management at Carr Mill Mall, which owns the Lawn, banned him from dancing. “I was out here dancing one morning, and the security guard was sitting right there by the tree. He got up, came toward me, I took my headphones off, and he said to me, ‘I just got a call from the mall manager and he said that you are not allowed to dance on the lawn anymore.’ I said, ‘Hmm. Well, officer, you tell the manager I said thank you for allowing me to dance as long as I have been dancing out here. And tell him I said Merry Christmas and God bless you, and may God bless you.’ I bowed to the security guard, I got my stuff, I got in my car, and I drove off.” It was the beginning of a highly publicized debate over who could use the Lawn, how they could use it, and who could regulate its use. “Even though I handled it with diplomacy and kindness, when I got in my car and drove off, I just about cried all the way out there. Because it was like his words of telling me I can’t dance out here was like a spear to my heart.”

The kindness Bruce had shown the people of Carrboro did not go unanswered. For the next three months, the town rallied around him and fought for his right to dance on the Lawn. The dispute attracted media attention from around the Research Triangle, and community members from as far away as Raleigh lobbied the mall to change their policy. The message Bruce and the citizens of Carrboro sent was clear: the Lawn belongs to all members of the community, and everyone has a right to enjoy it.

There is a temptation to observe third spaces in a vacuum—what works, what doesn’t, what’s positive, what’s negative. But most third spaces are far more complex than their obvious attributes. Third spaces are where we choose to spend time, yes, but in a way they are the sites of life’s most important moments: the quotidian experiences that make up who we are—as individuals and as communities. To judge if a public space is “good” for a community or not would ignore that third spaces are our communities, and the people who populate them the stewards of the microculture that emanates from any third space. Third spaces are not just places to sit—they’re expressions of the values and customs communities around the world choose to share. To hear it from Bruce, Weaver Street Market, perhaps to a passer-by nothing more than a grocery store, is a deep symbol of a community that is welcoming and open to all who choose to engage it:

“If it weren’t for this loving, compassionate, diverse community, Carrboro, I wouldn’t be able to dance right here. And that’s why I come here. And that’s why I love this space.”

Featured Image: Weaver Street Market. Photo Credit: Adam Hasan

About the Authors: Adam Hasan is a junior undergraduate student studying geography and city & regional planning. His research interests include understanding the actors involved in defining and redefining Global South urbanisms through social movements, governance systems, and media, as well as the history of spatial planning in post-colonial regions. Adam has previously worked with participatory informal settlement upgrading in South Africa, coastal resilience planning in Brooklyn, and was once ranked internationally as one of Simcity 4’s best city builders. In his free time he enjoys birdwatching, coffee roasting, and plays vice-skip on a local curling team.

Ezra Rawitsch studies economics, urban planning, and the geography of development at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Raised in Los Angeles, he spends his free time improving his guitar-playing, hand-drawing, and people-watching skills. Now, he explores the art and data that drives the urban world. His favorite third space is Stories Books & Café in Echo Park, Los Angeles.

Charm City Grit: Change in Baltimore Starts with the Community

September 19, 2017 / odrozd

Baltimore is a city of contradictions. Within its boundaries, one can find self-avowed social justice warriors who are determined to undo centuries of injustice in the city. One can also find people who have never left the sanctuary of whiteness of the Inner Harbor. I could not help but laugh cynically when I saw a bumper sticker that read “Baltimore: Actually, I like It” plastered on a Toyota Prius as the driver whizzed around the fare-free city circulator bus. For the three months I lived in Baltimore, the social tension was palpable from day one. However, the city is as unapologetically gritty as the people who live there. With recognizing its grittiness comes an awareness of just how much this city has overcome and how far it still has to go. Luckily, Baltimore is home to a pulsating community of unapologetic radicals and free-thinkers who, from the bottom up, are attempting to shift the tides in the favor of the disadvantaged groups in the city by providing safe spaces, inclusive services, and good old-fashioned community organizing. Whether this is enough to undo the historic segregation and disenfranchisement of the Black and impoverished communities is yet unclear.

Red Emma’s Coffee Shop and Bookstore. Source: New York Times

One prime example of a community of radical thinkers that I had the privilege of interacting with in the city is Red Emma’s Coffee Shop and Bookstore: a worker-owned cooperative governed by consensus. Red Emma’s makes its space, wi-fi, bathrooms, and extensive anarchist book collection available to all in the community, regardless of ability to pay. The shop regularly hosts speakers to discuss issues of gender, sexuality, and/or race and encourages all to participate. The shop is also home to the Baltimore Free School: a community-funded learning center whose mission is empowerment of people of all ages and backgrounds. The location of the shop in the Station North neighborhood is integral to its mission of providing a safe space for the community. The neighborhood is marred by frequent homicides and substance abuse. It is also home to many trans sex workers. The shop is typically a tranquil haven where people of all types meet, mingle, and converse. However, earlier this year a man was shot inside Red Emma’s in a non-politically motivated dispute, calling to mind the all-too frequent injection of violence into these vocally pacifist spaces. In response, Red Emma’s joined the legions of other Baltimorean organizations vehemently advocating for policy and programming to address the record levels of violence in the city. The incident reinvigorated the community as a reminder of exactly what so many Baltimoreans are striving for: peace and justice.

Another organization providing much-needed services to the people of Baltimore is Gather: a volunteer-run service that collects surplus food to redistribute in underserved neighborhoods. Food injustice and inequality is extreme in Baltimore: 1 in 4 people live in a food desert. Additionally, 30% of people do not have access to a vehicle which limits ability to drive to a grocery store or transport groceries. Gather Baltimore is increasing access to healthy foods in food desert communities as well as tackling food waste in the city. The organization relies on a volunteer fleet to collect produce from farms, farmers markets, and grocery stores, and the food is then distributed to local shelters and community organizations. One of my personal favorite programs of Gather’s is their Blue Bag program through which they hand out 30-pound bags of fruits and vegetables from their brick-and-mortar location in Remington for a suggested donation of $7. Whether or not people can pay, they are still able to access this program – assuming they can manage to lift a 30-pound bag of produce (I could not)! Of course, the Blue Bag program has questions of accessibility for people without a car, but the produce for the Blue Bag program is distributed only after all the community sites have been taken care of. While services like these are not necessarily finding a solution to the reason for food deserts, Gather is providing much-needed services in the meantime and raising awareness of hunger and food waste in the city.

Gather Baltimore. Source: Gather Baltimore.

Possibly the most omnipresent groups calling for change in Baltimore are grassroots community coalitions. One of the more recent examples of Baltimore’s community organizing that received national coverage is the Baltimore Ceasefire campaign which challenged Baltimore to a 72-hour period without any murders. While the 72-hour period saw 2 people shot and killed, the campaign brought awareness back to the ubiquity of violence in the city with the rallying call “Don’t Be Numb”. Another grassroots group in the city with a planning and development focus is the Baltimore Housing Roundtable: an organized group advocating for fair and just development in Baltimore. Their “United Not Blighted” campaign has gained significant traction in the city and calls for an end to private real estate development and property speculation. The campaign calls for the creation of permanently affordable housing and deconstruction of vacant houses that have been abandoned and neglected. The campaign has gained the support of many members of City Council as well as organizations across the city. These are just two examples of Baltimore’s propensity for community organizing, but the city has numerous similar groups individually tackling specific issues in the city.

Despite the seemingly large number of community groups and organizations seeking to actively promote change and investment in Baltimore, the city still wades through the messy fallout of segregation and inequitable development. The community groups are starting conversations and making noticeable change, but widespread dismantling of the current unjust social and geographic structure of Baltimore will not come without a public policy and planning agenda. Baltimore’s Planning and Public Health Departments, both of whom I was able to interact with, have a lens of social justice in many of their undertakings. Specifically, the 2017 Sustainability Plan, which is still in the works, focuses specifically on issues of equity in the city; the plan reaches past the traditional tenets of sustainability to include healthcare, poverty, environmental justice, and more. However, the city has also recently had some tone-deaf planning blunders, such as the Governor’s cancellation of the Red Line rail project which would have connected predominantly Black neighborhoods that were lacking transit access. Unfortunately, economic investment has almost entirely benefitted the North-South corridor of Baltimore known as the “White L” but has bypassed poor, Black neighborhoods to the East or West. Even most of the organizations discussed above, such as Red Emma’s and Gather Baltimore, are located in the White L. The spatial disparities in Baltimore continue to be a driving force in the systemic racism and disenfranchisement in the city.

Baltimore will be a city to watch over the next decade. Baltimore is one of the most systematically segregated city in the United States with a documented history of racist and classist housing policies and zoning ordinances. There are a plethora of businesses, nonprofits, and coalitions who are fighting to undo the wrongs of the past. While these organizations have made great strides, Baltimore is still in need of a significant and rigorous public policy and planning agenda that puts social equity first. I contend this is the only permanent and lasting way to address the poverty, crime, and homelessness that has left the city restless and eager for change. Baltimore will continue to address its issues in imaginative ways from the bottom-up.

About the Author: Ally Clonch is a North Carolina native and second year graduate student in City & Regional Planning and the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC. She is interested in researching the effects of the built environment on population health outcomes, especially as they relate to health disparities in low-income and minority populations. Outside of school, Ally spends her time perusing thrift stores, getting coffee with friends, or reliving her glory days by watching 90s television shows.

Featured Image: Baltimore. Credit: Business Insider

Advocating for Bicycle Boulevards: A Process in Durham, NC

September 7, 2017 / odrozd

How do community groups participate in transportation planning? Durham Bicycle Boulevards, an advocacy organization based in Durham, North Carolina, seeks to raise awareness for better bicycle infrastructure in the Bull City. Working in collaboration with Durham Area Designers, the group hosted a design charrette. The event brought together city planners, community members, and design professionals to create an outline for how Bicycle Boulevards could make Durham the most bikeable city in the South.

[vimeo 199890071 w=640 h=360]

Durham Bicycle Boulevards Concept from Brian Vaughn on Vimeo.

In late August, the City of Durham announced that it won a grant to implement Bicycle Boulevards from the North Carolina Department of Transportation. The city is matching the state expenditure with local funds.

If you would like to learn more about Bicycle Boulevards, consider attending the next Street Design Series meeting on Tuesday, September 12, 2017.

About the Author: Brian Vaughn is an undergraduate and minors in Urban Studies and Planning. This summer, he spent three weeks in South Florida, Charlotte, and Atlanta conducting a public life study around transit stations. His favorite transit oriented development is Union Station in Washington, DC.

Video Source: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Featured Image: Photo via Visual Hunt

Science Fiction and Planning

March 10, 2017 / odrozd

As planners, we often engage in visioning processes with communities to identify and elaborate on the kinds of communities we want to plan. Our vision plans build an image of what could be in order to inform the agenda, strategies and policies we then develop and implement as planners. Vision planning can be an imaginative space to respond to the needs and desires of a community’s stakeholders and to consider alternative ways of negotiating and organizing our communities within existing constraints.

Science fiction also offers an opportunity to envision a different world. Science fiction creates images of worlds free from poverty, capitalism and war and/or consumed by futuristic technologies, tragedies and disease. Science fiction, unlike planning, is free to imagine beyond reality and constraints from our social structures and norms. This opportunity has become the foundation for an emerging movement of social justice science fiction writers who are free to dream new realities.

The inspiration for many of these social justice science fiction writers comes from author Octavia Butler, a black science-fiction writer whose protagonists were young women of color, primarily black women. One of the most exciting works from this new movement is Octavia’s Brood, an anthology of radical science fiction by activist writers.

Toshi Reagon. Photo by Bernie DeChant.

While planners and science fiction writers have so much in common in the work they do, I’ve never really heard of any overlapping work between the two…until now! This semester, musician and activist Toshi Reagon begins a multi-week, multi-year DisTIL (Discovery Through Iterative Learning) residency through Carolina Performing Arts. This innovative arts fellowship intends to cultivate productive intellectual and creative relationships between artists and academics, which for Toshi will be primarily with the Department of City and Regional Planning. Toshi has created a new opera based on Octavia Butler’s post-apocalyptic novel Parable of the Sower. The opera blends science fiction with African-American spiritualism, and through her DisTIL residency, will further blend in ideas and concepts from city and regional planning. Toshi’s DisTIL residency is also meant to bring planning faculty and students into her world to engage in imaginative and creative thinking about the future of human civilization.

Toshi will return to the UNC Chapel Hill campus for the second time during the week of March 27th to engage in conversations with planning faculty members around systems modeling, housing policy, hazard mitigation and disaster recovery, environmental justice, and negotiation theory. Hopefully, her presence will encourage planners to vision beyond the confines of reality for a just a moment, to tip toe into the world of science fiction and to dream a new world.

About the Author: Hilary Pollan is a first year DCRP student specializing in Economic Development and pursuing a dual degree MPH in Health Behavior. She is interested in workforce development, participatory planning, and building healthy communities, and she strives to be a planner for social justice. She is thrilled to be the Graduate Assistant for Toshi Reagon’s DisTIL Fellowship through Carolina Performing Arts.

References:

Flanders, Laura. “Why Science Fiction Is A Fabulous Tool In The Fight For Social Justice”. The Nation. N.p., 2017. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.

“UNC-Chapel Hill Receives $1M Grant From The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation For Innovative Arts Program – The University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill”. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. N.p., 2016. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.

Humans of TRB: in the halls of America’s largest transportation conference

January 24, 2017 / odrozd

The Transportation Research Board (TRB) hosted its 96th Annual Meeting this January in Washington D.C. and broke attendance records by welcoming over 14,000 attendees to the nation’s capitol. TRB, as the event is commonly called, is the largest gathering of transportation researchers and professionals in America, and perhaps the world. The conference program (140 pages in total) is overwhelming, and sessions are unnervingly specific…anyone for “Semicircular Bending Tests of Concrete Asphalt Mixtures” at 1:30? No?! Well then how about “Integrated Roadside Vegetation Management and Pesticides“?

It is hard to know what sessions to pick and navigating through swarms of business casual bodies can be a little dehumanizing. At least that was my experience my first year at TRB in 2016. Going into TRB 2017, however, I was determined to shake things up and really enjoy my time in the halls of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. I drew my inspiration from the ultimate example of humanizing storytelling over at Humans of New York (HONY). HONY, started in 2010 by photographer James Stanton, brings Jane Jacobs’ “ballet of the good city sidewalk” to life with photographs and quoted snapshots of everyday life. The concept is contagious (HONY has over 18 million followers on Facebook) and I decided to embark on my very own Humans of TRB journey. Here is what I found:

The halls of TRB were still whiter and more male-dominated than I would have liked, but of course neither these groups, nor transportation professionals as a whole are monoliths. I began to build a more nuanced picture of the people around me and even found hidden appreciation for the attendees studying niche topics like asphalt geometry and traffic signal timing. People are not defined by their field or their specialization, but without a sincere “hello” to break the ice it can be easy to miss the unique experiences of our professional peers. Meeting the humans of TRB was the best part of my conference visit and I encourage others to try something similar at their next professional event.

Featured Image: Washington, D.C. Metro car. Photo Credit: Katy Lang

All other images by author.

About the Author: Taylor McAdam is pursuing a master’s in City and Regional Planning, focusing on transportation and equity. She is a California native, excited for the chance to explore a new region of the country and a new set of planning challenges. A typical week includes a good game of basketball, many hours toying with maps and GIS, and an attempt at a new dish, ideally to be shared with friends. Writing is Taylor’s favorite way to work through new ideas and keep critical conversations afloat.

Planners as Warriors

November 18, 2016 / odrozd

A few weeks prior to the election I was asked to facilitate the first Plan for All Safe Space. Plan for All is a sub-committee of the student governing body of the UNC Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP); its mission is to increase inclusivity, equity, diversity, and social justice within DCRP and the broader planning profession. The concept of a “Safe Space” emerged out of the women’s movement in the early 20th century, and was practiced primarily in activist, pedagogical, and LGBTQ communities. These were spaces in which marginalized groups could feel safe from harassment and violence; where they could feel free to act and speak openly, to ask questions, to foster strength in community and to form collective resistance.

Safe Spaces have become increasingly popular on university campuses, as a judgement-free and confidential spaces for students to gather and process. Students in DCRP requested that we create our own Safe Space to reflect on current events and topics that affect our lives as planners.

Serendipitously, the first Safe Space was planned for November 9th, a date I realized only just before would fall on the day after the election. I assumed we’d be celebrating, and had planned playful community building activities and interactive dialogue platforms.

But I, like so many of you, woke up the morning after the election feeling raw, with deep grief in my heart. I dreaded getting out of bed and facing a world that now seemed unworthy of my trust. As I laid in bed, I remembered that I would be facilitating the Safe Space in a few hours. In that moment I chose to find strength in being able to support the collective healing of my department and decided to share a piece of writing that sits in front of my desk always to remind me of the grounding values that guide my work as a Social Justice educator, planner, and human.

This piece is called “A Path for Warriors”, written by Margaret Wheatley. Margaret Wheatley is a systems thinker, who has most recently written about sustaining the human spirit of those who dedicate their life to service. “A Path for Warriors” is a list of pathways intended to help us preserve our spirits during times that feel like our energies are going to waste, that the world is against humanity. For many of us, the election of Trump is one of those times, and looking through the reading, the pathways seemed more relevant than ever.

A Path for Warriors_Margaret Wheatley (1).png

A Path for Warriors by Margaret Wheatley.

During the Safe Space, I asked everyone to choose a pathway that resonated with them on this challenging day, and that they would try to practice in the coming days and weeks. The path I’ll be working on is:

We welcome every opportunity to practice our skills of compassion and insight, even very challenging ones.

I welcome you all, planners and non-planners alike, to read through these pathways and find one that resonates with you. May it be a source of strength and healing as we grieve, process and prepare for this new moment.

About the Author: Hilary Pollan is a first year DCRP student specializing in Economic Development and pursuing a dual degree MPH in Health Behavior. She is interested in participatory planning, community economic development and building healthy communities. She believes that self-care is a radical act and strives to be a planner for social justice.

Safe space: Towards a reconceptualization (2014) Antipode, 46(5), pp. 1346–1365. doi: 10.1111/anti.12089.
Feature Image: Creative Commons.