Week 12: Cities and Nature

Kieran's piece was encouraging while Bill and Porus' was I suppose characteristically bleak - funny that the write the same way they teach. It was also interesting to think about the improvements in the urban environment that Bill and Porus wrote about in the 1990s. For sure the Amazon is still being destroyed for (perhaps just as fast as before), but I think Sao Paulo's rivers and significantly cleaner thanks to a grassroots movement that took hold in the area in the 90s!

While working on a project in the Town of Wayne, NY (about an hour west of Ithaca) I learned that Keuka lake's water is drinkable and that the smaller lake nearby, Waneta Lake, was not. I also learned that the rivers and run-off that feed Waneta lake eventually flow into the Chesapeake Bay (not far from my home town). This reminded that environmental problems comprise a network of local environmental challenges and that planners need to have the capacity to see the full network as well as the local problems.

There are a lot of wealthy people around the Chesapeake Bay, working hard to keep Purdue chicken plants from polluting Maryland's ground water and streams. At the same time, Town of Wayne residents should have two clean lakes, local septic systems should be improved or upgraded to a sewage system connected to a treatment plant. An improvement in Wayne is a small one for the Chesapeake, but there are hundred of towns along the Chesapeake watershed that could use a hand. Full network, many and varied local solutions....sounds like they need a planner :)

Week 11: Culture

Tuesday's readings fit nicely with Annie Leonard's talk on production chains (or "the history of stuff"). In her short film and talk Annie suggests three things - 1) people are disconnected from the full process and various externalities of our consumption, 2) our current consumption patterns are unsustainable 3) and if we better understand the real costs of "things" we'll be better able to create a new and regenerative (rather than distractive) system.
Zukin's piece notes that when public space becomes privatized it also becomes explicitly consumption based, whether Bryant Park users know it or not. Markusen's piece on import-substition economic development made me think about the possibility that that system is inherently closer to Annie's vision of a closed loop and sustainable production chain; that is if residents decided to produce for themselves in a sustainable manner (not always the case).
Talk of import-substitution always takes me back to my Latin Americanist days and does give me some pause - local production is not always the most efficient - but in my mind more importantly growth through human interaction is important. At least in Latin America, ISI required strict insulation and therefore exclusion which its fundamental flaw. It's interesting to think about it at an urban scale, rather than a national one.

Week 10

This weeks readings, as well as Prof Mitra's comments in class made me think about how, as a city planner, one manages to balance community engagement when community is such a fuzzy term. If I'm attempting to execute a participatory planning process at what scale do I frame my search for stakeholders and across what period of time? In a planning process, while identifying and involving stakeholders is the gold standard of inclusive planning, it can also be a tool for exclusion - keeping people out of the process who we or others don't deem important.
There was recently a great NPR bit on being part of a group/community/club and what that can mean. Me sense is that there needs to be checks and balances. Citywide policies that guide generally, professionals that can pull in back-up if a participatory process becomes small minded. I don't really have it worked out, I just know - wicked problems.