Urban Sandboxes

CEOs for Cities recently relayed an interesting story from USA Today that has some interesting implications for older, depressed urban centers as Gen Y and the Millennials gear up to make their mark on history:

Tulane's applications almost doubled from 17,572 pre-Katrina to 34,100 this year. As one Loyola's vp of enrollment told the paper, "Students know they are coming down to have an adventure. It's a great time to be part of something... the rebirth of a city."

NOLA and other struggling burgs -- think Detroit, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Baltimore, or even smaller cities like Canton, Reading, and Flint -- together provide a unique opportunity in their hard times. These are the urban sandboxes, the cities that present young people trying to prove their mettle with the opportunity to do so in new and interesting ways. Desperation breeds innovation out of necessity.

Previous generations have tried and blundered efforts to turn Rust Belt and Northeastern cities back into growing, productive urban hubs. We now know that stadiums, riverwalks, and high-end condos have a limited (if any) effect on cities. What is encouraging about the surge of interest in New Orleans is that the challenge of repairing the city is so blatant, and so thoroughly un-glamorous (try as Brad Pitt might to change that).

Perhaps this is an early sign that the next generation of urban innovators gets that top-down, aesthetic-focused efforts aren't what improves a city; indeed, the "fix downtown and the neighborhoods will follow" theory is proving itself to be pretty weak over time. Could the interest in the Big Easy mean that tomorrow's civic leaders are now planting the seeds, as college students and recent grads, for a reversal of this process?

Besides -- if Millennials can fix Detroit, the "Greatest Generation" mantle may be up for grabs.

(Photo from Flickr user Alex Summer. The original full-sized color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

The Fall of the Fearsome Ghetto

The ugly, flip side of the Glamourous City coin is, of course, the Fearsome Ghetto. A glamorous reputation almost guarantees that a city is home to neighborhoods that are as broken and ravaged as the attractive parts of town are...well...attractive. If not moreso. Glamourous Cities require these desolate places to serve as counterpoints; they offer contrast and add a note of danger to the mix. And, if nothing else is, a little bit of danger is very glamorous. As Tom Wolfe's brilliant Bonfire of the Vanities illustrated, the Upper East Side of Manhattan would not (could not) look so impossibly plush if not for the existence, a mere three miles away, of the ruined South Bronx. Literary allusions aside, Paris -- the ultimate Glamorous City -- saw its Fearsome Ghettos exposed to the world during the riots that plagued its impoverished suburbs in the fall of 2005.

My recent trip to Atlanta was due to a training/orientation program for the Americorps VISTA program. VISTA (Volunteers In Service To America) is a branch of Americorps that deals exclusively with fighting poverty. Thus, one day of our training was devoted to discussing the causes of and our own personal perspectives on poverty in America. The following passage from Donna Beegle's book Poverty...Be the Difference! was used in our training materials, and was one of the more powerful things I read during my time there:

"The current fragmented reactionary approach to addressing the challenges of poverty [in America] does not work. It falls short of helping people move out of poverty and will keep our society from getting to the point of addressing and eradicating the causes of poverty.

A comprehensive approach is needed to truly move people forward. This comprehensive approach to addressing poverty can only be achieved through partnership [Americorps' emphasis] between organizations that currently serve and interact with people in poverty: educational, social service, judiciary, law enforcement, health care workers, etc."

I know that it's a bit odd to cite a criticism of American policy right after using a French city to illustrate the breakdown of the Glamorous City/Fearsome Ghetto social balance, but the point, here, is universal: economic and social integration are the result of strong community networks. These networks require a restructuring of the way that we think about cities; for people to put the effort (and strong social networks take a lot of hard work) into their communities that is necessary to create inclusive neighborhoods, they have to have roots there. The Glamorous City actively discourages roots and, by extention, strong communities. These specialized areas cater to niche crowds -- yuppies, hipsters, DINKs -- and float along the currents of fad, leaving neighborhoods vulnerable to deterioration once the consensus of these groups changes.

Cities are constantly changing, demographics shifting like the sands. While change itself is a constant, the course for this change can be set -- for better or for worse. Neighborhoods and cities change for the better when people form strong community networks. To eliminate the Fearsome Ghetto, we must first deconstruct our notions of the Glamorous City. The two cannot be separated; when one falls, so shall the other. But not until.

(Photo from Flickr user brian4116.)

Capitals of Glamour

Berlin, it seems, is a city of paradox. The city has the image of an exciting, healthy metropolis set to ride globalization into the 21st Century. The reality is that, while vibrant, the German capital is a whopping $83 billion in debt, "[epitomizing] the costly, unfinished task of economically uniting east and west." (LA Times)

The much-buzzed-about city, which began rebuilding itself almost two decades ago, certainly looks good in photos. Splashy images of Renzo Piano and Helmut Jahn's towers at Potsdamer Platz and the then-edgy Sir Norman Foster's Reichstag rehab made the rounds in architectural circles, and tourist brochures promoted the city as a hedonistic party haven. The Glamo-magic worked, and international opinion of the city appears to have soared even while unemployment and debt mounted. Now, foreign investment is carving out a new Berlin where abandonment and low land values -- a rarity in a modern European capital -- are actually adding to the glamour of the place by practically promising high returns on investments. Berlin has become, in short, a testament to the power of reputation.

Stateside, Washington DC is apparently beginning to experience growing pains thanks to the American urban renaissance. As land becomes increasingly scarce in the mostly-gentrified areas surrounding downtown, the law that restricts building heights to 130 feet is being called into question. This idea is as ironic as it is controvertial, as a big part of the visual allure that adds so much to the city's Glam quotient (GQ?) can be attributed to the uniform building heights throughout the city, which have preserved historical character and internationally famous vistas.

Though crime is notoriously high, DC maintains a sizable measure of glamour; Los Angeles and New York are the nation's centers of culture, entertainment, commerce, and celebrity, but Washington has the special distinction of being the political center of the Western world. Long before globalization kicked into high-gear in the early 1990s, Washington was an international metropolis. Now, with every city from Taipei to Indianapolis claiming international importance, the District's monuments and the Americanized Parisian streetscapes that frame them so well in billions of tourists' photos have even more weight; these vistas put to shame many cities claims of relevance, serving as reminders of what a true Global City looks like.

Berlin, until recently, was another capital city with a low-slung skyline. Now, towers continue to push into the himmel (like my German skills?) and the city's popularity continues to grow. It's hard to imagine the Washington Monument and the Capitol Dome sharing the skyline with the types condo and office towers that appear on postcards of other American cities, but as land values in the central part of the city climb ever higher, some people are starting to ask whether its realistic not to. Their argument is not completely irrational.

Washington DC and Berlin are vastly different cities. Still, it's almost impossible to miss the parallels between the two in the tiny, tiny modern world. As DC struggles to calm its violent crime rate and re-imagine itself as a city that is accessible to people throughout the economic spectrum, it will be interesting to see whether the Glamourous City effect raises the city up like Berlin...or ruins it.


Links:
Investors betting on a Berlin boom (LA Times)

High-Level Debate On Future of D.C. (Washington Post)

Glamorous City/Fearsome Ghetto

"There's an original definition of the word glamour that I did not know about until I read fantasy novels. A glamour is a kind of magical spell, originally. To wear a glamour is to surround yourself with a kind of aura that causes people to see you in a different way, to see you as you are not--it's a disguise. And being on television, I've discovered, is sort of like wearing a disguise; one you didn't necessarily decide to put on, and only other people can actually see it."

So said John Hodgman in a recent piece on This American Life. Hodgeman was speaking about his own newfound celebrity, but what he was saying fit in nicely with a concept that I've been mulling for quite some time: the Glamorous City. Contemporary cities tend to be viewed in one of two ways: they are either dangerous, crime-ridden ghettoes or glittering hives of conspicuous consumption. Cities portrayed as healthy or attractive by the mainstream media (and, from what I can tell, popular opinion) tend to be those that have all of the amenities of the celebrity lifestyle. They are capitals of glamorous, high-tech industries and are rife with gentrification and urban chain stores. Austin, San Francisco, Seattle, and Miami -- these cities dazzle and delight the upper and upper-middle classes, who move into renovated lofts and edgy new condo towers and create a new influx of tax dollars that are supposed to benefit the host cities, but usually wind up providing increased police protection and granite flower planters in the areas from whence the new cash flows.

Now, there's nothing wrong with rich people living in nice neighborhoods. That's pretty much inevitable. What's troublesome about the Glamorous City is that it is a powerfully intoxicating concept that it fits perfectly into that quintessentially American ideal of moving to the city to "make it." But after making it, part two of the dream sequence is the move to a sprawling estate, or at least a house with a front and back yard, in the suburbs. The Glamorous City is a place that does not make room for children...its shimmering skyscrapers often (literally) cast shadows onto the other side of this painful dichotomy -- the Fearsome Ghetto.

The Glamorous City is a mirage. It is a transient place where only the richest of the rich stay put (often because they can afford to own a number of getaway homes elsewhere.) This impossibly attractive metropolis ignores what cities are about, advertising all of the perks of city life (fine dining, active arts communities, exciting nightlife) while not requiring residents to stick around long enough to need to care about dealing with all of the problems. The Glamorous City, then, creates the Fearsome Ghetto, as its sustainability (no green implications, for once) requires the parallel existence of an underclass, both to serve and to provide contrast. Glamorous Cities sparkle on our TV screens, promising luxury and privilege; meanwhile, those who live in the city (or have no choice but to), those who are a part of the actual urban community, don't see the mirage. They're left with the reality.

More on this throughout the week.

(Photo from Flickr user shadeofmelon.)