Aging infrastructure in first ring suburbs.

Infrastructure is kind of a hot topic right now.  The American Society of Civil Engineers released its 2009 Report Card for Infrastructure, giving the nation a cumulative grade of “D”.   Obama has been pushing for infrastructure improvements as a way to improve the economy while any mayor with a half baked, “shovel ready” project salivates at the thought of freely flowing federal funds.  One of the questions asked at the monthly CQRGC Healthy Places meeting was about suburban vs urban infrastructure investment. Specifically, they were interested in the investment split between the first ring suburb of Gwinnett County and the urban core of Fulton County. The speaker, Paul Moore from Glatting Jackson, answered the question with an example that I had particular experience with – the Parisian suburb riots of 2005-06.

During my last year of undergraduate Architecture at Georgia Tech, I studied abroad for 10 months in Paris. I lived in the northern portion of the 18th arrondisement, which is better known for the artist’s district Montmartre and the graceful cathedral of Sacre Coeur. For me, it was also nervously close to ‘les banlieues’, or suburbs of Paris. Despite their proximity to downtown, the neighborhoods are separated from historic Paris by a literal ring of disinvested rail tracks that remain under utilized in order to remain available for military use in case of the city’s attack. And while I can’t vouch for the relevance of this motive, I can say that the elevated rail line does a great job at separating the ‘haves’ from the ‘have nots’ in the city.

Peaceful Protests.

In fact, the phrase ‘les banlieues’ is now recognized as a euphemism in the French press to describe low income housing projects that the government practically forced immigrant communities into during the 1970s and 80s. Petty crime has also increased in France, with much of it blamed on juvenile delinquency fostered within the banlieues, as a result the ensuing areas are perceived as being unsafe places to live. During the early 1990s, tougher law enforcement and immigration control measures were enacted, and partly as a reaction to those increased penalties without a perceived increased in assistance, the area imploded with riots in the Fall of 2005.

Now, some might say that Buford Highway would never come to such extremes, but a quick pass at the area:

• Its aging infrastructure that was never built to be adaptable, a key tenant for sustainability. Atlanta had similar growth issues during the 1950s.

• However, at that point, Atlanta had the tax revenues to support re-investment. Currently, Gwinnett County is experiencing decreasing  tax revenues each year.

• The changing demographic of the Buford Highway strip, is startling similar to the immigrant based Paris suburbs.

With the current mortgage crisis, economic downtown, and rising prices, its not out of reach to think that we might have similar problems in our own back yard. As these first ring suburbs age, and traditional disenfranchised communities growing larger, this purely infrastructural issue can spill over and really start affecting communities.

 

How to keep plans moving after the consultants leave.

Make no little plans. They have not the magic to stir mens blood.

-Daniel Burnham

I’m pretty sure this is on the syllabus, day one of planning school; if its not already taped to the classroom door, typed into the Powerpoint presentation and posted on the course’s website.  Another thing Burnham could have added though, is to have a contingency plan in place for when the initial plan’s consultant stops getting paid to promote the project and the community / council / or committee takes over. At a public meeting, the speaker was asked exactly this question. What was in store for his plan after he stopped taking it on a speaking tour? I thought his answer was genius.

The speaker noted that part of the initial planning process was to create an open enrollment for the advisory committee. This is a change from the norm. Advisory committees are typically 20 person boards full of figure heads and individuals of stature within the political and economic hierarchy of the community. These individuals are typically asked to participate by either the consultants or other advisory committee members based on connections. As a refreshing counter to this, the consultants created a website that hosted an open enrollment policy, allowing passionate members of the community to sign up, advise the process, and then (the genius part) continue stumping for the proposal within their communities and local government structure long after the consultant and figure heads had left the project.

While I’m sure this created headaches of its own, the hassle of consensus making among the 150+ individuals who signed up comes to mind, its benefits are clear. Having 150, hard core, very knowledgeable community supporters (aka, the foundations of a mob) who are willing to devote their scarce time and energy into promoting a project never hurt.

 

Rick Lowe = demi god + Loeb Fellow

And, in case, just like I did, you’ve relegated Rick to the “social- activist- artist- in- residence- experimental- housing- neighborhood- activist- of- socialness” category . . . I just found this from the Heinz Awards website:

This year he is a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard University School of Design, and he is currently working as the chief arts planner with Rem Koolhaas.

Koolhaas?! as in ‘Junkspace’ and ‘F–k the context’ koolhaas?? Whoa! I’m not quite sure what a ‘chief arts planner’ actually does or is responsible for design-wise, but I’d be willing to take it on for a day. Fun stuff!

 

Rick Lowe = demi god

As part of the “re/constructingatlanta: a contemporary continuum” intervention, Lowe was a highlighted speaker. His lecture was titled “Sculpting the Built Environment”.

His work was initially influenced by John Biggers, an artist who studied the social impacts fo the shot gun house. Lowe’s social variation on this, he calls Project Row House, was built in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Houston, TX in the early 90s. Scheduled for tear-down, agencies cited the homes as too close in density with dangerous narrow passageways between units that could easily be used by criminals to hide and partake in illegal activities. However, these are the very things that previously provided a high quality of life for the area. Wide front porches, neighbors within shouting distance, and a common ’square’ on which children could play all helped bind this historically, socially-animated neighborhood. Lowe recognized this, and with his four ‘necessary neighborhood components’, turned the community around.

1. Relevant architecture (I love how he puts this one first)
2. Sense of creativity and culture
3. A handing down of wisdom from generations
4. A social safety net

In all, his initial building project, sponsored with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, encompassed twenty two homes over the first few years. Ten housing arts programs, five with educational programming, and seven for single mothers getting back on their feet. All of the houses are for rent, none for sale. Lowe and his team believed that market-rate, for sale housing would eventually come to the area, but renters stood a higher chance of being gentrified out. The project is still growing, in the next year 56 homes will be built by what is now called the Project Row House Community Development Corporation, creating pockets of close-knit neighborhoods with traditional front porches.

An unfortunately fuzzy photo, this is gallery director Cathy Byrd, Rick Lowe, and I at the exhibit after the lecture. We chatted for a bit, mostly about NPU-V, and its possibilities. The next week’s lecture was about the long term disinvestment, speculative development and displacement experienced by residents of neighborhood planning unit V, the Summerhill/Mechanicsville stadium-area neighborhoods. Some residents of the area joined in our conversation as well. And I’d have to say, Rick knows his stuff.