Tag: Urbanism

From Archives) How Hey Arnold inspired suburban millennials to dream about the city

November 1, 2022 / odrozd

This post was originally published on November 7, 2017.

By Kyrsten French

Nickelodeon 90’s cartoons largely reflect the suburban world that much of its young audience grew up in.¹ Think Spongebob’s Bikini Bottom or the Rugrats’ California single-family residential neighborhood. One show, Hey Arnold, stands out from the rest, taking its viewers out of the suburbs for a trip downtown. During a time when many young Millennials had experiences of the urban core in decline, this cartoon showed us the potential for having fun in the city. As a kid, I was fascinated by the scenery and by the apparent freedom granted to the characters to move around and be independent. This was my first glimpse of what an urban center could be.

Arnold and his friends have the kind of lifestyle that today’s planners dream of creating. This nine-year-old’s home is Hillwood City, a fictional amalgam of Portland, Seattle, and Brooklyn. Arnold’s parents are absent from his life, so he lives with his spunky grandparents in a boardinghouse inhabited by neighbors of varying ages, races, nationalities and income-levels. Arnold knows every one of them, in part because they often eat meals together. His friends all live in the neighborhood, and they are able to walk by themselves to school, to get ice cream or to go down the block to play baseball. Local business owners keep their eyes on the street and quietly ensure everything stays calm and copacetic. A cool jazz beat accompanies the cast as they stroll through their lives. The city feels safe, vibrant and romantic, and the viewer can’t help but want to join these kids in their city draped in sunset. It’s a Jane Jacobs-inspired cityscape of a well-connected, vibrant, urban village.

More than structures, a city’s fabric consists of its inhabitants. The major theme of Hey Arnold is about how people learn to live together, celebrate their differences and help each other get through life’s challenges. It has a timeless message of tolerance and unity. The show explores such themes as ethnic heritage, neighborhood character, urban decline and revival, and even one boy’s addiction – to chocolate. “Stoop Kid,” is an episode about a boy who sits on his front stoop and taunts passersby, until it is discovered by the neighborhood kids that he is actually deathly afraid of leaving his front porch. Some turn to taunt him back.

“Stoop Kid.” Photo Credit: heyarnoldreviewed.blogspot.com/20 1

Instead of following the crowd, Arnold helps Stoop Kid overcome his phobia. In the end, many in the neighborhood gather to cheer as Stoop Kid finally lets go of his fear of the unknown and steps down. Most episodes follow the same pattern, where a new character at first may seem scary or difficult to relate to, until Arnold decides to get to know them and finds out that despite appearances, they really aren’t so different.

Let the rest of this visual tour through Arnold’s city be an argument to share this cartoon with the kids in your life, or revisit it on your own to re-imagine downtown through the eyes of a child.

The boarding house where Arnold lives. Photo credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/Sunset_A 1

Jane Jacobs’ “eyes on the street.” Photo Credit: heyarnoldreviewed.blogspot.com/20

Kids walk through the city without supervision. Photo credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/Hillwood 1

This nine-year-old rides the bus solo. Photo credit: elitedaily.com/humor/hey-arnold-a 2

Arnold’s grandpa, in the city park, attempting to beat Robby Fischer at Chinese checkers. Photo credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/Steely_P 1

How about that time the neighborhood kids pitched in to clean up an abandoned lot to make a baseball field, only to have the adults take it over for their urban farming projects? Photo Credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/The_Vaca 1

Hillwood is a made-up, but truly great, American city that has inspired many Millennials to dream of more than what the suburbs can offer. Hey Arnold is available on Netflix and Hulu.

Hillwood. Photo Credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/Hillwood 2

¹ Schneider, William. July 1992. “The Suburban Century Begins.” The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/ecbig/schnsub.htm.

Featured Image: The City of Hillwood, from Hey Arnold. Photo Credit: elitedaily.com/humor/hey-arnold-a 1

About the author: Kyrsten French was a DCRP master’s student specializing in Land Use and Environmental Planning. Her main area of interest is understanding and communicating how the city works as a financial entity, with the belief that knowing the true cost of sprawl will prompt leaders to avoid it. Before coming to DCRP, Kyrsten went to the Ohio State University and studied philosophy and Chinese. She went on to hike the Appalachian Trail in 2014.

Trailer Park Urbanism

August 12, 2021 / odrozd

By Elijah Gullett

Manufactured homes (also known as mobile homes or trailers) are a significant component of the housing stock in the United States. In North Carolina alone, mobile homes make up 12% of the housing stock.[i] Despite their prevalence, manufactured housing is plagued with stigmas. The derogatory term, “trailer trash”, is still a common phrase. These stigmas appear in state and local regulations as well. Manufactured housing is often perceived by local citizens as a nuisance or a drain on their property values, which in turn encourages regulatory barriers to manufactured housing development. These barriers include forcing trailer parks off to urban peripheries, permitting them in only undesirable locations, or banning them outright.

But are these regulations just or optimal?

Where is manufactured housing now?

Despite the lingering stigmas, manufactured housing has advanced substantially in the past few decades. The Hollywood image of run-down trailer parks riddled with crime is no longer an accurate depiction of the manufactured housing industry. Since 1976, manufactured housing has been subject to HUD regulation under the Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards.[ii] These standards have raised the quality of manufactured housing since, and the industry has worked hard to combat stigmas.

Trailer parks are also not associated with higher rates of crime, unlike comparable housing developments targeted at low-income individuals, such as public housing. Research from the University of Illinois-Chicago finds that mobile home communities and adjacent residential communities do not have substantially higher levels of violent crimes or property crimes.[iii] This is despite popular perception that trailer park communities are hotbeds of illicit drug use, violence, and property damage.

Mobile homes are also an important source of affordable housing stock in the US. Local and state governments have a long history of banning and heavy-handed regulation of low-income housing. Housing types, such as residential hotels and boarding homes, are regulated and banned under the presumption of protecting low-income citizens from low-quality housing. Certainly, these housing options, and many mobile homes, are not necessarily ideal. However, the tradeoffs between the ideal aesthetics and qualities of housing, and the quantity supply of affordable housing, cannot be ignored.

In 2020, the average rent for mobile homes in the United States was $568.[iv] This makes mobile homes easily one of the most affordable options. Furthermore, the construction costs for manufactured housing are less than half that for similar detached, single-family homes. 71% of mobile home residents also own their home (the structure itself, but typically not the land). This accessible ownership provides low-income people access to property ownership and to have more control over their living environment.

What can planners learn from mobile housing?

The aforementioned lack of criminal activity in trailer park homes, as compared to some other low-income housing developments, can provide us with a useful blueprint for how to create safer low-income neighborhoods. Traditional, concentrated public housing developments have historically been associated with higher levels of violent crime and property crimes.[v] Trailer parks do not have these same tendencies, despite being areas of concentrated poverty. Furthermore, many trailer parks are noticeably clean and well-kept.[vi] So why the disparity?

Trailer parks are often governed by residents’ associations.[vii] These associations are legal bodies that allow residents to manage the park, ensure all residents are meeting a set of behavioral and aesthetic standards, and mediate conflicts between residents. They are also powerful actors in fighting large, corporate buyouts of mobile home communities and keeping rents stable.[viii] Unlike other low-income housing communities that are often made up heavily of renters, mobile home communities are made up of people who own their homes and rent the land, creating a unique set of incentive structures that allow residents’ associations to work.

The polycentric governance structure of locally owned mobile home communities is a powerful tool planners should look to as a potential model.[ix] Low-income communities are often barred from having a voice in how their communities change and are maintained. These residents’ associations, however, demonstrate how low-income individuals can be empowered to take control over how their communities are run.

The future of manufactured housing policy

It would be intellectually dishonest to not recognize the specific challenges faced by those living in manufactured housing. As previously mentioned, trailer park communities are often vulnerable to being bought up by larger corporations who raise rents on low-income residents with little community input.[x] Furthermore, the specific ownership structure common among mobile home residents – owning the building, but not the land – makes their claims to full ownership precarious.[xi]

These shortfalls, however, do not have to be intrinsic to trailer parks, nor do they mean manufactured housing should be ignored as a viable means to increase affordable housing supply. The nature of manufactured housing means a lot of affordable, accessible housing can be created relatively quickly with lower input costs. To protect this affordability, local governments can rezone trailer parks to prevent them from being purchased by investment companies and keep them in local hands.[xii] Communities can also be empowered to purchase the land their homes sit on and create a “resident-owned community” (ROC), or the land can be purchased by local non-profits.

If local policymakers, planners, and activists care about affordable housing, manufactured housing policy cannot remain at the margins. Manufactured housing is a powerful tool for creating and sustaining affordable housing for millions of Americans. Local community leaders should be creating open lines of communication with mobile home communities in their areas; creating protections for these parks from corporate purchase, and fully integrating mobile home parks into the community at large.

[i] U.S. Census Bureau (2020). Selected Housing Characteristics: North Carolina.

[ii] U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards.

[iii] McCarty, William P. (2010). Trailers and Trouble? An Examination of Crime in Mobile Home Communities. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 12(2).

[iv] Statista Research Department (2021). Average monthly rent for manufactured housing in the United States from 2010 to 2020.

[v] Hartley, Daniel (2014). Public Housing, Concentrated Poverty, and Crime. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

[vi] Geoghegan, Tom (2014). Why do so many Americans live in mobile homes? BBC News.

[vii] Patton, Dan (2018). How Does A Mobile Home Owners Association Work? EZ Homes.

[viii] Kolhatkar, Sheelah (2021). What Happens when Investment Firms Acquire Trailer Parks. The New Yorker.

[ix] Carlisle, Keith and Gruby, Rebecca L. (2017). Polycentric Systems of Governance: A Theoretical Model for the Commons. Policy Studies Journal, 47(4)

[x] Kolhatkar 2021

[xi] Kirk, Mimi (2017). How Mobile Homes Hinder the American Dream. CityLab.

[xii] Manufactured Home Park Solutions Collaborative (2016). Local Agency Toolkit.

Elijah Gullett is a rising fourth-year undergraduate student majoring in Public Policy with minors in Urban Studies and Environmental Justice. His academic interests include fair and affordable housing, sustainable development, and LGBTQ+ urban life.

Edited by Eve Lettau

Featured image courtesy of Anthony Fomin, Unsplash

How Hey Arnold inspired suburban millennials to dream about the city

November 7, 2017 / odrozd

Nickelodeon 90’s cartoons largely reflect the suburban world that much of its young audience grew up in.¹ Think Spongebob’s Bikini Bottom, or the Rugrats’ California single-family residential neighborhood. One show, Hey Arnold, stands out from the rest, taking its viewers out of the suburbs for a trip downtown. During a time when many young Millennials had experiences of the urban core in decline, this cartoon showed us the potential for having fun in the city. As a kid, I was fascinated by the scenery and by the apparent freedom granted to the characters to move around and be independent. This was my first glimpse of what an urban center could be.

“Stoop Kid.” Photo Credit: heyarnoldreviewed.blogspot.com/20 1

Let the rest of this visual tour through Arnold’s city be an argument to share this cartoon with the kids in your life, or revisit it on your own to re-imagine downtown through the eyes of a child.

The boarding house where Arnold lives. Photo credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/Sunset_A 1

Jane Jacobs’ “eyes on the street.” Photo Credit: heyarnoldreviewed.blogspot.com/20

Kids walk through the city without supervision. Photo credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/Hillwood 1

This nine-year-old rides the bus solo. Photo credit: elitedaily.com/humor/hey-arnold-a 2

Arnold’s grandpa, in the city park, attempting to beat Robby Fischer at Chinese checkers. Photo credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/Steely_P 1

Hillwood is a made-up, but truly great, American city that has inspired many Millennials to dream of more than what the suburbs can offer. Hey Arnold is available on Netflix and Hulu.

Hillwood. Photo Credit: heyarnold.wikia.com/wiki/Hillwood 2

¹ Schneider, William. July 1992. “The Suburban Century Begins.” The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved from: https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/ecbig/schnsub.htm.

Featured Image: The City of Hillwood, from Hey Arnold. Photo Credit: elitedaily.com/humor/hey-arnold-a 1

About the author: Kyrsten French is a DCRP master’s student specializing in Land Use and Environmental Planning. Her main area of interest is understanding and communicating how the city works as a financial entity, with the belief that knowing the true cost of sprawl will prompt leaders to avoid it. Before coming to DCRP, Kyrsten went to the Ohio State University and studied philosophy and Chinese. She went on to hike the Appalachian Trail in 2014.

How This Year’s Best TV Show Matters to Southern Urbanists

January 27, 2017 / odrozd

A young man walks down a suburban street, and enters a storage facility. He opens his unit, lays down on the bed inside. He stares down at two $100 bills. He earned them by managing his cousin, an Atlanta rapper.

This closing scene of FX’s Atlanta is emblematic of many of protagonist Earn’s struggles: hustling to earn an income, being homeless, being a provider to his daughter. This scene and many others in the show, which recently won a Golden Globe Award for “Best TV Series Comedy or Musical”, portray the urban issues Atlantans face, namely poverty and auto dependence, while celebrating its hallmark rap scene.

The Atlanta skyline. Photo: Brendan Lim

The backbone of the series is its score, chock full of tracks by Atlanta rappers. Donald Glover, who created the series and stars as Earn, is a hip hop artist himself.

spotify:user:playstation_music:playlist:4AcLvdg8uwWnN5nii2gIri

And hip hop is the centerpiece of the series, compelling Earn to seek out his cousin, up and coming rapper Paper Boi. In an Angles blog, Adeyemi Olatunde wrote about the intersection of urban issues and rap music:

Rap, real rap, is a gateway into the lives of some members of our society that is often glamorized by the industry as a one-dimensional space which is crime ridden, drug filled land of immorality.

And the world Glover shows us isn’t glamourous. Paper Boi is party to multiple violent altercations and sells marijuana because rapping doesn’t pay. He lives in multifamily housing, and cannot shake the stereotype of a violent thug. In multiple situations, Paper Boi is denied an opportunity to redefine himself on his own terms.

In another episode, Paper Boi is a member of a panel discussion about transgender issues on a public access network. This exchange in particular speaks to the expectations that society sets for young black men, and how oppression is or isn’t experienced in solidarity.

The host asks him, “Isn’t the lack of a father the reason you hate trans people?” The host has assumed he is from a fatherless home (his reaction is captured in this gif).

“It’s hard for me to care about this when no one cares about me as a black human man,” responds Paper Boi.

Atlanta creator Donald Glover plays Earn, Paper Boi’s cousin and manager. The character is a suburban Atlantan living paycheck to paycheck. Photo: NASA

Glover is intentional to mix identity and setting with Atlanta. After winning the Golden Globe, he told journalists that “I only cared about what people in Atlanta thought. You can’t name a show Detroit and then have Detroit people hate it. I was only caring if my parents thought it was cool, if I could go to a Chick-Fil-A and see that people knew the new Donald Glover show.”

Atlanta is a metropolitan area of many suburbs. One of Earn’s greatest struggles is transportation, having to take the bus or rely on his daughter’s mother or Paper Boi for rides. Grist’s Ben Adler wrote that Atlanta, “is about working-class African-Americans in the Southern suburbs, and it highlights one of the country’s biggest, least-appreciated problems: living without a car in the midst of sprawl.”

Earn’s living situation is reflective of a significant trend in the South, the suburbanization of poverty. The stress Earn faces from having no steady place to call home is palpable in his relationships with other characters, and speaks to the experience of poverty. The portrayal of mobility challenges in Atlanta is also striking. For suburban dwellers, there is a trade off between costs and distance from midtown Atlanta. But transportation costs are higher, and transit is less frequent, evidenced by Earn’s dependence on friends and an infrequent and inconvenient bus system. The series investigates the social impacts of sprawl, but this growth trend has significant carbon footprint consequences, too. And while innovative projects such as the Atlanta BeltLine seek to incorporate a more compact and sustainable urban form in Atlanta, they also raise concerns about affordability and gentrification.

Atlanta’s carbon footprint is more than 10 times greater than Barcelona’s, despite similar population sizes. Source: World Resources Institute

Atlanta is a social commentary on urban form and experience, as is rap music. It is an expression of community, a celebration of culture, and a critique of larger social forces. As a white person, this was the first time I have ever watched a show that portrayed white characters only as flat. Watching this show helped me step into a world I thought I knew quite well (the urban south), but in fact largely misunderstood. Planners can learn quite a bit from interpreting data or reading reports, but they won’t understand life in Atlanta until they watch this series.

Brian Vaughn is an Editorial Board member and undergraduate content editor for CPJ. His favorite Atlanta rapper is André 3000 of Outkast.