Carolina Planning Journal

Bridging Theory and Practice Since 1974

Tag: photo

Announcing the Winner of the 2023 Winter Photo Contest & CPJ Cover Photo contest!

February 14, 2023 / / 1 Comment

After a close competition, we are pleased to share the winning submission to this year’s Carolina Angles photo contest. Christy Fierros captured this image overlooking Tucson, Arizona, and shares her thoughts on its meaning below.

Christy’s winning photo will also be featured in Volume 48 of the Carolina Planning Journal, Urban Analytics, coming this spring. Thank you to everyone who participated, and congratulations to Christy!

The Catalina Mountains and ancient Saguaros witness an area in constant flux. After the Gadsden Purchase of 1854 annexed this area of Mexico into the United States, “The Old Pueblo” grew. While urban renewal schemes are well-known in many east-coast cities, few are recognized in the Southwest. In the 1960’s, Downtown (pictured), was targeted by the City in their “slum clearance” project. The nearly 400-acre area destroyed was multi-ethnic, but predominantly Chicanx and had walkable neighborhoods with adobe homes, small grocers, and shops—exactly the mix of uses that millions of dollars are being spent to emulate today.

As more people move to Tucson for its affordability, arid climate, and economic opportunities, the city grapples with improving its transportation systems. Tucson recently acquired federal funds to implement equitable Transit-Oriented Development (eTOD). A Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system is proposed from this funding with a route crossing through areas of south Tucson where the median household income is $32K and rents are rapidly rising. While an improved public transit system and more dense development is badly needed, the BRT system represents a new spatial conflict for Tucson’s working-class who more often than not, bear the burden of land use decisions while others reap the benefits.

Many new, mixed-use and transit-oriented developments in the city core cater to higher income folks, university students, and tourists. The BRT project and new developments surrounding historic barrios look like gentrification to many communities in South Tucson. Mi Barrio No Se Vende (“My Neighborhood Is Not For Sale”) yard signs are scattered throughout. While the eTOD funding promises to expand affordable housing to prevent displacement, many hope history doesn’t repeat and the project funding stays true to its name.

Christy Fierros is a first-generation master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning specializing in Land Use and Environmental planning. She received a dual bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona in Environmental Studies and Geography. She is passionate about making environmental injustices nonexistent and planning practices rooted in repair and respect. Hiking, bird watching, gardening, or looking at trees are just a few things that replenish her after a long day at the computer.

Looking for another opportunity to share your work? Submit to the CPJ Cover Photo contest!

The Carolina Planning Journal is now accepting submissions for the cover photo of this year’s journal, and we’d love to feature your image! Submissions should be related to this year’s journal theme, Urban Analytics: Capabilities and Critiques. Examples of previous cover images can be found at the journal’s online repository. If your photo is selected for the cover, you will receive $100 for the rights to use it in the journal as well as photo attribution.

To enter submit your high-resolution (min. 300 dpi) photo to carolinaplanningjournal@gmail.com with the subject “CPJ Cover Photo Submission,” along with a brief explanation of how your image relates to the journal’s theme. Contact the Journal with any further questions.

Your 2022-23 Editors:

LANCE GLOSS | Editor-in-Chief & JO KWON | Managing Editor

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’s in City and Regional Planning in 2023. Jo (Joungwon) is a fourth-year Ph.D. student in City and Regional Planning with an interest in using visuals in environmental planning. She has been a part of CPJ since 2019. With a background in Statistics and English Literature, she received her M.A. in Computational Media at Duke University.

Announcing the Carolina Angles Winter Photo Contest

December 12, 2022 / / 1 Comment

Do you have winter travel plans? Preparing for a holiday staycation? Either way, Carolina Angles invites you to participate in our Winter Photo Contest!

We encourage UNC planning students, alumni, and all urban enthusiasts to enter. Photos will be judged based on aesthetics as well as the articulated connection to planning.

The photographer of the winning photo will receive:

  • Recognition in the Carolina Planning Journal and Angles blog
  • Pre-order of Volume 48 of the Carolina Planning Journal, Urban Analytics (published in Spring 2023)
  • Carolina Planning Journal swag

Please use this google form to submit your photo and a brief blurb with how it relates to planning by Friday, January 27, 2023 at 5:00pm.

We look forward to your entries!

Featured Image courtesy of Duncan Richey’s Snowbird, Utah

Announcing the Winners of the 2022 Winter Photo Contest!

February 24, 2022 / / 1 Comment

We had a number of excellent submissions for this year’s Carolina Angles photo contest, leading to some fierce competition! We are excited to announce three winners of this year’s contest – Ruby Brinkerhoff, Duncan Richey, and Josephine Jeni Justin. Check out their photographs below, along with their own words about its connection to planning.

Ruby’s winning photo will also be featured in Volume 47 of the Carolina Planning Journal, Planning for Healthy Cities, coming this spring. Thank you to everyone who participated, and congratulations to this year’s winners!

1st Place Winner

Title: Winter Paradise: Pennsylvania winters in an old house with a wood stove
Medium: 35mm black & white film
Artist: Ruby Brinkerhoff

As we stand with this woman in front of a large pile of firewood in need of hauling, a winter landscape in rural Pennsylvania comes into focus. Planners often portray the aerial view, yet the view from above can obscure the realities that people experience on the ground. Both perspectives, aerial and eye-level, are valuable. Understanding the immediate experience of people’s daily lives is a useful and necessary balance to the professional aesthetics and values we impose from a conceptual distance.

Ruby Brinkerhoff is a second-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning. Ruby specializes in land use and environmental planning, with a sustained interest in food systems, climate change, and equitable access to resources. Ruby received a dual bachelor’s degree from Guilford College in Biology and Religious Studies. She loves playing music, exploring North Carolina, and all things botanical.

2nd Place Runner-Up

Title: Snowbird, Utah
Medium: 35mm color film
Artist: Duncan Richey

Little Cottonwood Canyon is home to Alta and Snowbird (pictured), two premier ski resorts that, according to some, boast “the greatest snow on Earth.” However, as nearby Salt Lake City’s population and its mountains’ popularity has grown, so has its traffic problem. The highly contentious debate to mitigate traffic in Little Cottonwood Canyon surrounds two options: a $592-million, 8-mile gondola or $510 million for enhanced bus service with a wider road.
Gondola supporters describe it as a cleaner, avalanche-proof solution that entirely avoids the treacherous road that is often clogged with traffic. Supporters of increased bus service worry that what they believe is the commonsense solution — the bus route– is getting lost in the gondola hype. The gondola, if completed, would make it the longest in the world.
Others, like Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson, ask if either solution is necessary. “I question whether we need a public investment to support two ski resorts,” said Mayor Wilson. “Might we be better off to just work with the Forest Service to put in some limits and accept that there’s 10 days a year when the snow is really coming down, the risk is too high and we just close the resorts? That, to me, is a better alternative.”
However, big changes to the canyon appear inevitable. The public comment period recently concluded on January 10, 2022 and the Utah Department of Transportation is expected to issue a final recommendation early this year.

Duncan Richey is a first-year Master’s candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning. His academic interests include active transportation and the relationship between mental health and the built environment. When he isn’t busy with school, Duncan enjoys skiing and shooting film photography.

3rd Place Runner-Up

Title: Beach Nourishment in Florida
Medium: iPhone
Artist: Josephine Jeni Justin

Over winter break, I visited Miami, Florida. This picture was taken at the Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park where a beach nourishment project was underway. The project involved placing approximately 135,000 cubic yards of sand along 7.2 miles of critically eroded shoreline from the Port Everglades Inlet south along the State Park and along the beaches of Dania, Hollywood, and Hallendale. A wider and higher beach can provide storm protection for coastal structures, create new habitat, and enhance the beach for recreation.

Josephine Jeni Justin is a first year Master’s of City and Regional Planning student at UNC Chapel Hill concentrating in Land Use and Environmental Planning and is pursuing the Natural Hazards Resilience Certificate. She immigrated to the United States from Tamil Nadu, India as a kid and her family currently lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. In her free time, Josephine enjoys reading, traveling, and learning graphic design and sewing. After graduating she hopes to pursue a career in disaster management and coastal resiliency in California.

Looking for another opportunity to share your work? Submit to the CPJ Cover Photo contest!

The Carolina Planning Journal is now accepting submissions for the cover photo of this year’s journal, and we’d love to feature your image! Submissions should be related to this year’s journal theme, Planning for Healthy Cities. Examples of previous cover images can be found at the journal’s online repository. If your photo is selected for the cover, you will receive $100 for the rights to use it in the journal as well as photo attribution.

To enter submit your high-resolution (min. 300 dpi) photo to carolinaplanningjournal@gmail.com with the subject “CPJ Cover Photo Submission,” along with a brief explanation of how your image relates to the journal’s theme. Contact the Journal with any further questions.

Announcing the Carolina Angles Winter Photo Contest

December 17, 2021 / / 1 Comment

Do you have winter travel plans? Preparing for a holiday staycation? Either way, Carolina Angles invites you to participate in our Winter Photo Contest!

We encourage UNC planning students, alumni, and all urban enthusiasts to enter. Photos will be judged based on aesthetics as well the articulated connection to planning.

The photographer of the winning photo will receive:

  • Recognition in the Carolina Planning Journal and Angles blog
  • Pre-order of Volume 47 of the Carolina Planning Journal, Planning for Healthy Cities (published in Spring 2022)
  • Carolina Planning Journal swag

Please use this google form to submit your photo and a brief blurb with how it relates to planning by Friday, January 28, 2022 at 5:00pm.

We look forward to your entries!

Featured Image courtesy of Pexels

The Hawker Center

September 24, 2019 /

Many Americans got their first big glimpse into Singaporean culture via the 2018 rom-com Crazy Rich Asians, which is set in the small Southeast Asian country often associated with finance and food. The film primarily focuses on the gilded world of Singapore’s super-rich, but also highlights one of the most democratizing urban places on the planet and a unique cultural and urban planning product of the region: the hawker center.

Hawker_First

Hawker center staff on patrol for tables to clear at the Chinatown Hawker Centre, Singapore. Photo credit: Doug Bright.

On their first night in Singapore, Rachel and Nick (the “rom” in the rom-com) join friends at a hawker center, a semi-open-air bazaar of dozens of food stalls serving the broad spectrum of food one can expect in a country whose unique culinary culture is a mosaic of Chinese, Malay, and Indian foodways. As Nick puts it in the movie, “Each of these hawker stalls sells pretty much one dish and they’ve been perfecting it for generations.” The Crazy Rich crew fills up on fresh sugar cane juice, laksa, satay, chili crab and more all while sitting among a crowd whose diversity is enabled by the affordable prices of hawker fare.

Hawker_Header

Browsing chicken rice options at the Chinatown Hawker Centre, Singapore. Photo credit: Doug Bright.

In the region, street (hawker) food has been a cultural fixture for decades. In Singapore, the institution of the hawker center has explicit roots in planning. In 1950, the Hawkers Inquiry Commission began investigating problems arising in the hawker industry: poor hygiene, disorder caused by the unorganized use of the public right-of-way, and resulting law enforcement issues. The first wave of hawker centers was built as a solution between 1971 and 1986. The island’s 100+ hawker centers (with more on the way), as well as hawker registration operations, are currently under the purview of Singapore’s National Environment Agency (NEA). According to the NEA, individual hawkers rent stalls out with prices varying by size and location (median of $1234/month, accounting for about 12% of costs), with additional fees for service and maintenance, varying from $240 to $930.

Hawker_Third

Dessert beckons at the Chinatown Hawker Centre, Singapore. Photo credit: Doug Bright.

Parallel models in Hong Kong (cooked food centers) and Malaysia (hawker centers, kopitiams) reflect similar accessibility and diversity. Generally, customers first find a seat, reserving it with a pack of tissues (or another personal item) before browsing options. At busy times, it is common to share tables. Customers order at individual stalls plastered with the menu – photos, prices, and all. Self-serve stalls require the customer to bus their own order, but many will deliver to the table, identified either with a quick point or the number of the table (as noted by a label). A nearby beverage hawker is available – and will often stop by the table – to take a drink order. Teas, coffees, and juices are popular all day, while beers come out in the evening. A diverse offering of highly specialized stalls means that many options are quite affordable, especially the wide variety of noodle and rice dishes, without sacrificing quality.

Hawker_Fourth

A busy morning at Chong Choon kopitiam, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. Photo credit: Doug Bright.

The spaces themselves are utilitarian: fairly stark and unadorned, but functional and durable. Seating and tables are simple, sturdy, and easy-to-clean, just like the tile floors. The cups and plates are similarly long-lasting hard plastic, labeled on the bottom allowing staff to return them to the proper stalls. Bussing and dishwashing is centralized, with some centers asking patrons to help by delivering their dishes to a collection station. Napkins are the responsibility of the customer, so elderly salespeople often can be found roaming centers selling packs of tissues. Patrons can also sometimes find tissues being sold by the bathroom attendant, where payment is also collected for using the toilet. Bathroom design also prioritizes ease of cleaning, most being completely tiled. The common design of these spaces is low-maintenance and centralizes some costs that otherwise might make restaurant entrepreneurship challenging.

Hawker_Fifth

The white, washable walls of Woon Lam kopitiam, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia. Photo credit: Doug Bright.

While using these spaces does cost money, their affordable cost (a cup of coffee for less than $1.50 in Singapore and less than 50 cents in Malaysia) for a quality product allows for a diverse clientele, even in a wealthy place like Singapore. They can be found in nearly every neighborhood, allowing for many types of people to access them. They are a ubiquitous and quotidian experience: about 60% of Singaporeans eat one of their daily three meals at a hawker center. In combination, these factors make for a satisfying restaurant experience in a cultural touchstone that closely resembles a vibrant public space. It’s this atmosphere that makes hawker centers (and their counterparts in the region) the best places to eat, drink, people-watch, and absorb culture in Southeast Asia.

Hawker_Last

A local pharmacist’s supplies at a kopitiam in Pulau Ketam, Selangor, Malaysia. Photo credit: Doug Bright.

Hawker_Last_2

The best advertising at Kafe Kheng Pin, Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia. Photo credit: Doug Bright.

About the Author: Doug Bright is a first-year master’s candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning, specializing in transportation. He’s a proud Chicagoan, enjoys taking the streets by two wheels, and indulges in improvisational cooking. He likes thinking and talking about education, design, and sustainability. He also likes jokes. Doug received his undergraduate degree in Social Studies from Harvard College.

Carolina Angles Launching its Winter Photo Contest

December 6, 2018 /

Do you have winter travel plans? Preparing for a holiday staycation? Either way, Carolina Angles invites you to participate in our Winter Photo Contest!

We encourage UNC planning students, alumni, and all urban enthusiasts to enter. Photos will be judged based on aesthetics as well the articulated connection to planning.

The photographer of the winning photo will receive:

  • Pre-order of Volume 44 of the Carolina Planning Journal, Changing Ways, Making Change (published in Spring 2019)
  • A Carolina Planning Pint Glass
  • Carolina Planning Journal T-shirt

Please use this google form to submit your photo and a brief blurb with how it relates to planning by Thursday, January 10, 2019 at 5:00pm.

 

We look forward to your entries!

 

 

Featured Image: Ciucaș Peak, Romania. Photo Credit: David Marcu on Unsplash.

Carolina Planning, the oldest student-run planning publication in the country, is produced once a year in UNC's Department of City and Regional Planning. Articles selected for the journal are written by academics and practitioners, covering a wide range of topics relevant to today’s planning challenges.

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Carolina Planning is published with the generous support of the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association, and the John A. Parker Trust.

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