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Tuesday, October 31st
Did you know you can book a hotel at www.newcolonist.com?
The other day my friend called to thank me for telling him about hotel booking on newcolonist.com. He found a hotel right near his favorite destinations at a great price. In case you don't know about our service, I thought I'd do a little promotion in order to spread the great news!
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Fall flower bulb sale - save 25%
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 10.31.06 @ 08:21PST
Monday, October 30th
Brick, NJ: A Long Way From St. Louis
After years of waiting, Brick, New Jersey at last has claimed the title as America’s Safest City. The announcement was made in the new edition of City Crime Rankings, an annual reference book of crime statistics and rankings slated for publication next week. The results of the 13th annual Safest City Award were released today by Morgan Quitno Press, a Lawrence, Kansas-based publishing and research company. At the opposite end of the crime scale, St. Louis, Missouri was named the nation’s Most Dangerous City, a title it last held in 2002.
“Brick Township always has fared well in our Safest City rankings. For the last six years of our study, it has ranked as one of the top five safest cities in the U.S.," said Scott Morgan, President of Morgan Quitno Press. “It’s safety record is impressive, with no murders or rapes reported. Brick also boasts the lowest overall violent crime and robbery rates among cities across the nation.”
The Morgan Quitno Safest City Award is based on a city’s rate for six basic crime categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor vehicle theft. All cities of 75,000+ populations that reported crime data to the FBI for the six crime categories were included in the rankings. In this year’s survey, 371 cities were considered for the award. Final 2005 statistics, released by the FBI on September 18, 2006, were used to determine the rankings.
Joining Brick at the top of the Safest City rankings are Amherst NY, Mission Viejo CA; Newton MA and Troy MI.
At the opposite end of the Morgan Quitno crime scale, St. Louis, Missouri not only came out ahead of Detroit in the World Series, it also beat out Detroit to rank as the nation’s most dangerous city. St. Louis reported the highest violent crime and property crime rates among cities of 75,000 or more population.
“St. Louis last ranked as the Most Dangerous City in 2002,” said Morgan. “While the city clearly struggles with crime, there is some good news: St. Louis’ property crime rate has fallen 14 percent since 2001.”
Trailing St. Louis on the more dangerous end of the crime rankings (in ascending order) are Detroit MI, Flint MI, Compton CA and Camden NJ.
In addition to ranking the safety of cities, Morgan Quitno Press also examined crime in metropolitan areas. For the first time, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin tops the rankings as America’s Safest Metropolitan Area. The Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI metropolitan division ranked as the most dangerous for the third consecutive year.
29-1/2"-long Window Draft Stopper
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 10.30.06 @ 04:22PST
Thursday, October 26th
Leonardo DiCaprio Movies
Leonardo DiCaprio has two global-warming related movies on his site. Check 'em out!
Global Warming Movie
Water Movie
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Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 10.26.06 @ 09:59PST
Monday, October 23rd
Talent + Innovation + Connections + Distinctiveness = Formula for Urban Prosperity Says New “CityVitals” Report by CEOs for Cities
A Note from TNC: Very thought provoking and relevant to modern urban thought. A should read if not a must-read.
Urban leaders seeking success in the new economy should stop paying attention to ubiquitous city rankings and start focusing their attentions on four dimensions of success: talent, innovation, connections and distinctiveness, according to a new report released recently.
CityVitals, developed by Portland-based economist Joseph Cortright in partnership with CEOs
for Cities, lays out the rationale for the things cities must be really good at doing today and a
new set of metrics – 20 in all – to measure their progress.
“Every week it seems a new ranking of cities makes the headlines,” said Carol Coletta,
president and CEO of CEOs for Cities. “Unfortunately, few of those rankings are relevant to what
makes cities successful today. CityVitals gives urban leaders a much richer picture of what’s
going right and what’s going wrong in their cities and uncover their best opportunities to
improve.”
The 64-page booklet includes data on the top 50 metro areas in the U.S. for each of the 20
measures. It also looks at each city’s Metro Performance (economic indicators) and its Core
Vitality (the strength of the city’s urban core).
“To be successful today, cities have to develop their own unique formula that addresses the four
dimensions of urban success: talent, innovation, connections and distinctiveness,” said Cortright.
“No single city performs best on all these metrics. And these metrics are very different than the
traditional recipes of cutting taxes and building convention centers or arenas.”
CityVitals enables urban leaders to assess their city’s performance on each of these four
dimensions, to plot strategies to build on strengths and offset weaknesses, and establish a
distinctive, winning and competitive strategy, he said.
“For too long, urban decision makers have invested in magic bullet solutions that they hope will
spur their city to become the next big thing,” Cortright said. “As a result we’ve seen a number
of failed copycat economic development strategies over the last decade. CityVitals works
because it recognizes that there is no one formula for greatness. But there are key ingredients
to success – the mixtures just tend to vary.”
An Explanat ion of the Four Dimensions, Me t ro Pe rformance and Core Vitality:
The Talented City: The indispensable asset in a knowledge economy is smart people. Cities are places where people build knowledge through education and experience. Cities attract smart people and create opportunities for them to develop and apply what they know. Talent, which we measure by educational attainment, the number of creative professionals, the migration of well-educated
young adults and the number of foreign born college graduates, reveals the underlying intellectual capital a region can draw on to build its economy and to weather the inevitable shocks of competition and change.
The Innovative City: The ability to generate new ideas and to turn those ideas into reality is a critical source of competitive advantage not just for businesses but for regions, as well. Economies and regions advance by a process of trial and error. Those places that generate many trials of novel products and services are most likely to move ahead. Invisible and weightless, ideas can’t be measured directly, but the footprints they leave in the economic landscape can be traced by counting numbers of patents, the dollar value of venture capital investments, the extent of personal entrepreneurship and the number of small businesses.
The Connected City: Cities thrive as places where people can easily interact and connect. These connections are of two sorts: the easy interaction of local residents and easy connections to the rest of the world. Both internal and external connections are important. Internal connections help promote the creation of new ideas and make cities work better for their residents.
External connections enable people and businesses to tap into the global economy. We measure the local connectedness of cities by looking at a diverse array of factors including voting, community involvement, economic integration and transit use. Our measures of external connections include foreign travel, the presence of foreign students and broadband Internet use.
The Distinctive City: The unique characteristics of place may be the only truly defensible source of competitive advantage for regions. In a world of global competition, a strategy of “pretty much the same, maybe cheaper” is a recipe for mediocrity and economic stagnation. Our measures of distinctiveness are inherently incomplete. Every city has its own unique characteristics for
which there are few, if any, statistics. We offer some initial measures of distinctiveness drawn from market data about consumer behavior and its variance across U.S. metropolitan areas.
Metro Performance: The four dimensions of City Vitals — talent, innovation, connections, and distinctiveness—are important because they underpin urban prosperity. For each metropolitan area, we examined key indicators of economic wellbeing: per capita income and the rate of poverty. Per capita income provides a broad measure of overall living standards, while the poverty rate captures the extend of economic distress. Urban areas that do well in generating and attracting talent, encouraging
innovation, building connections and capitalizing on distinctiveness are the best positioned to improve the income of their residents and to reduce poverty, especially in the long run.
Core Vitality: A strong urban core also plays a critical economic role. The urban center of metropolitan areas is the focus of cultural activities, civic identity, governmental institutions and usually has the densest employment, particularly in financial, professional and creative services. Urban cores are also the iconic centers of cities, where interaction and connections are strongest. To measure the vibrancy of urban centers, we computed the income, educational attainment and poverty levels of the
urban neighborhoods within 5 miles of the center of each region’s central business district. (We use this common yardstick to overcome the problem that arises from using widely varying city boundaries to make inter-metropolitan comparisons.)
29-1/2"-long Window Draft Stopper
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Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 10.23.06 @ 14:41PST
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Study Shows How Transit, More Transportation Choices Reduce Cost Burdens on Families and Regions
The Surface Transportation Policy Project (STPP) and the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) released a study, Driven to Spend: Pumping Dollars out of Our Households and Communities, which shows that families are paying a high price to meet their transportation needs and families in areas with fewer transportation choices carry even greater burdens.
Driven to Spend updates prior transportation cost studies published by STPP and CNT, but for the first time provides information on the effect of gas prices on family budgets. The study ranks 28 metropolitan areas on their combined transportation and housing costs and recommends specific actions that governments – federal, state and local – can take to reduce the burden of transportation costs for families by investing in more transportation options.
Key findings of Driven to Spend include:
Households in regions that have invested in public transportation reap
financial benefits from having affordable transportation options, even as
gasoline prices rise.
Low-income families are unduly impacted by higher transportation costs
since transportation expenditures claim a higher percentage of their family
budgets.
For the first time, the study analyzed the effects of gasoline price hikes
and ranked areas by the jump in household expenditures due gas prices.
From 2003-2004, Los Angeles area families paid $316 more per
household for gasoline, with families in the Kansas City metro area paying
$312 more for the second highest increase. The New York metro area
posted the smallest increase at $220 per household.
Families in the Houston (TX) metropolitan area have the highest overall
transportation expenditures at 20.9 percent, followed by the Cleveland (OH) and
Detroit (MI) metro areas at 20.5 percent, Tampa (FL) at 20.4 percent, and
Kansas City (MO) at 20.2 percent. The national average was 19.1 percent,
making 2003 the second highest year for transportation costs as a share of
family budget in the last twenty years. Transportation expenditures in 2002 set a
record for the period at 19.2 percent.
The five areas where families expended the smallest share of their household
budgets for transportation services were the Baltimore (MD) metro area at 14
percent, Portland (OR) at 15.1 percent, New York (NY) and Washington, DC
areas at 15.4 percent and Philadelphia (PA) at 15.9 percent.
Gravity Bike Stand
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 10.23.06 @ 14:33PST
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New Census Bureau Housing Data Highlight Changes
The real median home value in San Diego jumped from $249,000 to $567,000 between 2000 and 2005, the largest increase in the nation among big cities. Across the country, real median home values soared 32 percent, according to new 2005 American Community Survey data released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The American Community Survey (ACS) provides timely and updated information about the nation’s changing and diverse population every year. Without the ACS, this type of information — historically gathered just once a decade — would not be available for communities until 2012.
The 2005 ACS data released include housing characteristic information such as occupancy, units in structure, year built, rooms, occupants per room, vehicles available, house heating fuel, value, mortgage status, gross rent, selected monthly owner costs and other characteristics. Additional subjects covered in this release include means of transportation to work by workplace geography, geographic mobility by selected characteristics, characteristics of households and families, grandparents and the foreign-born population. Also surveyed are disability characteristics, work status in the past 12 months, occupancy and financial characteristics. The data are available for nearly 7,000 areas, including all congressional districts and counties, cities and American Indian/Alaska Native areas of 65,000 population or more. This survey is a first look at key housing information for many communities since Census 2000 – including 75 of the top 100 fastest growing cities.
Selected Data Highlights for Largest and Smallest U.S. Cities
Median Housing Value
Among the nation’s largest cities, some of the highest percent increases in real median home values between 2000 and 2005 were found in San Diego (127.2 percent), Los Angeles (110.2) and New York (79.1). In the smaller cities, with 65,000 population or more, some of the highest percentage increases in real median home values were found in Boynton Beach, Fla. (120.3 percent); Folsom, Calif. (99.5)1; and Redondo Beach, Calif. (91.7). Among the smallest cities covered in the 2005 ACS data release with populations of 65,000 or more, Newport Beach and Santa Barbara, Calif., were the only two cities with a median home value of a million dollars or more.
Owner-Occupied
More than two-thirds of the nation’s total occupied housing units were owner-occupied in 2005, an increase of 4.5 million over the Census 2000 number (69.8 million). Among the 15 largest cities, Jacksonville, Fla., had one of the highest percentages of owner-occupied housing units at 64.2 percent. San Jose, Calif., and Indianapolis also had high percentages of owner-occupied housing units. Of the 15 smaller cities, Missouri City, Texas (88.6 percent); Boynton Beach, Fla. (72.9); and Folsom, Calif. (71.3), had some of the highest percentage of owner-occupied housing units.2
Median Selected Monthly Ownership Costs
Real median selected monthly owner costs for owners with mortgages have increased 5.0 percent nationally between 2000 and 2005. Though not statistically different from each other, some of the highest increases among the largest cities in real median monthly owner costs were found in Detroit (24.1 percent), Chicago (21.7) and San Francisco (19.6). Decreases of about 10 percent in real median homeownership costs were found in some of the smaller cities such as Bryan, Texas, and Greenville, N.C.
Median Gross Rent
Additionally, the real median cost of renting a home increased nationally by 6.7 percent from 2000 to 2005. Some of the highest real median rent percentage increases among the large cities were found in San Diego (27.2 percent), Detroit (22.5), and Los Angeles (15.9). Among the smallest cities, Redondo Beach, Calif. (21.7), also had increases in real median rent. Real median rent actually decreased in some of the largest cities including San Jose, Calif. (-9.4 percent), and Dallas (-3.0).
Indoor Christmas Trees
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 10.23.06 @ 14:30PST
Monday, October 16th
Urban Crime On The Rise: New Initiative Seeks To Find "Why" by Studying Target Cities
While addressing the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced the launch of the Initiative for Safer Communities to target violent crime prevention efforts in selected communities across America that have shown unexplained increases in crime.
Though the national crime rate generally remained at record low levels across the nation in 2005, some cities experienced an increase in certain types of violent crimes, according to FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) surveys. The first stage of the three-part Initiative, to begin over the next several weeks, will investigate the increase in crime experienced by representative cities. In this phase, DOJ will conduct a detailed survey and visit local law enforcement in impacted areas to identify possible factors contributing to the increase.
The second phase of the Initiative will focus on policy development by analyzing the findings of the investigative phase to identify the roots of the localized increases in crime. The third phase will focus on matching localized results with established federal programs that are proven to be effective in combating crime and, where necessary, creating new initiatives.
The cities to be examined in the investigative phase of the Initiative are still being finalized, but both cities which have experienced increases in crime and significant decreases in crime will be studied, in order to best ascertain which crime-prevention tactics have been most effective. Local law enforcement leaders will be asked questions regarding a variety of demographic, economic, and social matters which could affect the crime rate, including whether gang violence, drug trafficking, or prisoner re-entry have caused changes in criminal activity. They will also be asked about whether there are specific federal, state or local initiatives that have successfully cut the crime rate.
Crime rates in 2005, as measured by the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR), show crime rates at near-record low levels in 2005. The NCVS, based on household surveys, shows violent and property crime rates that are at the lowest levels recorded since the survey’s inception in 1973. The UCR, based on police reports, indicates that property crime decreased 2.4 percent in 2005.
However, some cities experienced an increase in homicides in 2005 and there was a 1.3 percent increase in violent crime across the nation. Though this rate is lower than any year ever measured except for 2004, the Department of Justice is launching the Initiative for Safer Communities as a proactive measure to help thwart further increases in the rates of violent crime and homicide.
Baseboard Air Deflector
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 10.16.06 @ 13:43PST
Sunday, October 15th
Solving the Wrong Problem
The New York Times today posted an article on the general failure of electricity deregulation to lower electricity prices or, in fact, to engender "competition" at all. (California residents might have a particularly acute sense for failure of market systems in public utilities, still suffering as we are from Enron's depredations.)
From the article:
"Under the new system there have been some big winners — including Goldman Sachs and the Carlyle Group, the private equity firm — that figured out that there were huge profits to be made in one area of the new system.
Such investors have in some cases resold power plants they just bought, making a large profit. In other cases, investors have bought power plants from the utilities at what proved to be bargain prices, then sold the electricity back at much higher prices than it would have cost the utility to generate the electricity.
Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut attorney general, said the supposedly competitive market has been “a complete failure and colossal waste of time and money."
Perhaps selling off generation and distribution infrastructure to investors--who after all want only return on investment; they're not in the game of actually working to produce anything--is not the way to approach the problem (if it exists) of unfair rates.
After all, a non-profit public utility is far more inclined to invest in efficiencies that benefit the public--and other inhabitants of the planet--than someone who sees himself as losing money by doing good, and gaining it by playing dirty (both environmentally and economically). The efficiencies they strive for are related only to ROI.
And since we're not going to have multiple sets of transmisison lines going to each customer, you cannot possibly have a real "marketplace" in electricity (or water or sewerage or any other of that sort of thing).
But maybe the answer isn't making large-scale power generation and transmission slightly less inefficient.
Maybe the answer remains what environmental progressive have known it to be since the '70s: the breaking up not of economic entities but of power generation itself, into smaller local units. Solar panels and windmils on every rooftop, small hydro on every stream, biomass by every garbage dump...power generated only a few miles, or a few inches, from where it will be used. Supplemented by larger, community-owned plants for things powering translocal uses such as subways, trains, and public lighting.
And, of course, just using less of the stuff. Twisting in some energy-saving light bulbs, avoiding appliances with standby modes (even if you have to wait a whole minute for the TV to turn on), just turning the damn lights off when you're last to leave a room.
It's not that hard, and you don't have to sell your community out to to a bunch of empty suits who want to get your money without giving you anything for it in exchange.
Local power generation: buy it from your neighbors, or make it yourself. That's the future of electricity.
Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 10.15.06 @ 07:34PST
Thursday, October 12th
Getting Out of Kansas City Is Easy
New Survey Ranks 37 Largest Urban Areas, Identifies Key Factors for Reviewing Readiness Plans
The American Highway Users Alliance announced a first-of-its-kind research study that provides a clear and understandable rating system for planners, homeland security experts, and the public to use when considering the evacuation challenges facing the nation's urban areas.
In the new Report, only one urban area received an "A" for its evacuation capability - Kansas City. Columbus, Memphis, and Pittsburgh each received a "B". Seven areas were graded as a "C" and six received "D" grades. Twenty of the 37 urban areas examined received an "F" for their evacuation abilities. The lowest scoring areas were Detroit, Washington, DC, Phoenix, Seattle, San Diego, San Francisco-San Jose, Miami, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles - with Los Angeles facing the most difficult challenge of all 37 areas.
The Report, entitled "Emergency Evacuation Report Card 2006; 25 Urban Areas Could Face Greater Challenges than New Orleans Experienced after Hurricane Katrina," evaluates the 37 largest urban areas in the country - those with more than 1,000,000 in population - to identify the evacuation challenges facing planners and residents in each area. The evaluation index grades urban areas by reviewing internal traffic flow, highway capacity of major exit routes, and automobile accessibility. The research findings also include information on planning for the transit dependent. In general, areas that scored higher have lower population densities, more substantial evacuation routes, and do not have major geographical barriers obstructing evacuation exits.
Prior to September 11, 2001, there was little or no recognized need to plan for emergency evacuations in most urban areas. Since then, security, transportation, and planning professionals have struggled to quickly develop expertise in this field. The Department of Homeland Security has recently expressed concern over "significant weakness" in evacuation planning. This report is intended to identify key factors needed for reviewing evacuation readiness plans and making short and long-term improvements on the ground.
The report reveals that urban areas rely heavily on private automobiles and publicly provided highways for evacuation, as evidenced by the evacuations in New Orleans and Houston in 2005. As a result, the capacity of roads and highways becomes the most critical element of evacuation planning. While data shows that the vast majority of Americans have access to automobiles, those without automobile access also rely on highways, because buses are the most important mechanism for evacuation for those without cars.
In addition to expanded roadway capacity and automobile access, the report calls for establishment of a national urban evacuation standards and reporting system and for the completion of urban area evacuation plans.
Ice Hound
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 10.12.06 @ 09:04PST
Friday, October 6th
Global Warming Will Alter Character of the Northeast
Global warming is poised to substantially change the climate in the Northeast if heat-trapping emissions are not curtailed. The extent and impacts of the change depend on the choices that governments, businesses and citizens make today. So concludes the first study released today by the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment (NECIA), a collaboration between the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and a team of independent scientists from universities across the Northeast and the nation. To read the full report, visit www.climatechoices.org/ne.
"The very notion of the Northeast as we know it is at stake," said Dr. Cameron Wake, Research Associate Professor at the University of New Hampshire's Climate Change Research Center and co-lead of the report. "The near-term emissions choices we make in the Northeast and throughout the world will help determine the climate and quality of life our children and grandchildren experience."
The two-year study, Climate Change in the U.S. Northeast, employs state-of-the-art science to project the regional consequences of continued reliance on energy sources such as coal and oil that produce high levels of heat-trapping emissions versus shifting to clean and renewable energy to power our economy. The climate report is the first NECIA product, with additional analyses underway to assess the impacts of global warming on forests and agriculture, coastal and marine resources, human health, and urban centers across the Northeast, as well as options for mitigation and adaptation. A major synthesis report of these findings is expected in early 2007.
While the two emissions scenarios lead to similar consequences in early decades, the report finds the scenarios lead to starkly different outcomes as children born today reach middle-age. The projections analyze the impacts in 30 year increments: 2010-2039, 2040-2069, and 2070-2099.
Average annual temperatures. Under the higher emissions path, temperatures are projected to increase 6.5-12.5°F by the end of the century. An increase of 3.5-6.5°F is projected on the lower path.
Extreme heat days in cities. By the end of the century, many Northeast cities can expect 30 or more days over 90°F under the lower emissions scenario, and 60 or more days per year under the higher emissions scenario. Currently, Northeast cities experience one or two days per summer over 100ºF. This number could increase to three to nine days under lower emissions and 14 to 28 days per year under higher emissions.
Less snow. Across the Northeast, the number of days with snow on the ground will be reduced by 50 percent in the higher emissions scenario, but only by 25 percent under the lower scenario. More winter precipitation will fall as rain. Both projections will likely have implications for winter recreation and tourism in the region.
Droughts. Droughts in the region are projected to be much more frequent on the higher emissions path.
Extreme precipitation events. Under both emissions scenarios, more frequent and more intense heavy rainfall events are expected.
"The Northeast's economy and lifestyle is built around the seasonal cycles—pleasant summers, winter recreational opportunities, and iconic fall foliage," said report co-lead Katharine Hayhoe, Research Associate Professor in the Dept. of Geosciences at Texas Tech University. "Fortunately, the worst consequences of global warming can be avoided by reducing our emissions starting today."
Though global warming is a global problem, the Northeast has a central role to play. Ranked against the nations of the world, the Northeast is the seventh largest emitter of carbon dioxide, the most important heat-trapping gas. Historically, the Northeast has been a leader in clean air policy, directly influencing federal policy. As a recognized innovator on many levels, from policy to technology, the Northeast region is poised to lead the way on emissions reductions, nationally and globally.
Reducing heat-trapping emissions is the most important step to curbing the rate and extent of climate change. Increasing industrial and building efficiency, switching to renewable energy sources such as wind, and driving more efficient vehicles are clear steps the Northeast can take.
"Lowering emissions provides a tremendous opportunity for the Northeast," said Dr. Peter Frumhoff, Director of the Global Environment Program at UCS and Chair of the NECIA synthesis team. "We can use our intellectual capital to lead the world in innovative technologies and practices that we will all need to leave a healthy climate for future generations."
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 10.06.06 @ 05:51PST
Monday, October 2nd
Barriers To Bus Service
I've often thought about taking the bus to the shopping areas in the near suburbs--specifically the McKnight Road area in Pittsburgh. Then I thought about trying to get from one store to the other, jaunting across the busy roadway. Today I was driving back from the carpet store and spotted a couple guys waiting near the McKnight Road Kinkos. Even if you don't have to go between stores, even waiting for the bus can be an unpleasant and even dangerous experience (looks like they may slide into or under the bus!). A little further down the road another stop offered a shelter, but a careless driver, especially one in a vehicle the size of the truck seen here, could pose significant risk to the waiting rider.
It's probably not a good idea to have bus passengers waiting this close to fast-moving traffic, but without alternatives, a traffic barrier that would prevent a vehicle from colliding with the waiting passenger would seem necessary. In the case of the men seated along the roadway, perhaps a bench would be a minimal accomodation.
While I'm on the subject of bus stops, a neighbor pointed out the well-known dangers of an urban intersection at the corner of East Ohio Street and Chestnut/16th Street. This view shows the narrow space inches from large trucks where bus passengers must wait and pedestrians must traverse. Ther's hardly room for two pedestrians to pass. More, this intersection is without walking signals!
There are a few more photos of this intersection here.
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 10.02.06 @ 13:25PST
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Gentrification and Me
The topic of this post is gentrification. A reader had sent an email to the TNC (The New Colonist) Pittsburgh email group asserting that I was a proponent of gentrification. That's been a hot button topic in urban situations for some time. It's also a hard one to get a handle on.
First, you can't stop a neighborhood from changing. It either gets better or falls apart.
We'd all like neighborhoods to be cheap and cool forever, but that's not reality anywhere. (Name one that has been cheap and cool for more than a decade or so!) Urban neighborhoods stay cheap and cool for a while until the houses start falling down or the crime rises beyond the tolerable level for most people. Or in the other direction, it becomes unaffordable, or at least living in a big space becomes unaffordable so we'd have to change our lifestyle to live there. Sometimes people move into an urban area in the second half of a "gentrification" process and then scream that they don't want gentrification, which really means "more gentrification," ie "post me" gentrification.
MORE
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 10.02.06 @ 07:59PST
